This month issue An Independent Journal Dedicated to the Advancement of Chip - Scale Electronics September - October 2000 Email the editor

By Ron Iscoff, Editor

SEMICON West displays ranged from merely large to grandiose, as this shot from above shows.

San Jose-Despite reaching middle age (in tradeshow years), SEMICON West, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in July, is still the biggest, most exciting and certainly the most influential show in the semiconductor industry.

The larger San Francisco venue at Moscone Center featured 2,864 booths from 1,174 companies. The San Jose backend portion held 1,346 booths from over 600 exhibitors.

SEMI capped the show's anniversary during SEMICON week with a $350/ plate dinner featuring Gen. Colin Powell. With the traditional large tent next to San Jose Convention Center's McEnery Hall absent this year, more than a few exhibitors were miffed to find themselves and their exhibits hidden away in corridors and hallways.

Show talk centered on flip-chip technology and wafer-level/stacked packages in San Jose and 300 mm wafers/ copper interconnects/ low-k in San Francisco. Is the near-term impact of 300 mm wafers significant? Many people, especially those in the assembly and test area, believe 300 mm will come online much later than forecast.

While SEMICON served up its customary program of exhibits and technical programs, the exhibits, as usual, were the main attraction.

McEnery Hall, named after a former San Jose mayor, was the centerpiece of the show.

The number and size of displays has grown so much over the years that three days is hardly long enough to see everything on the floor. First-time visitors may have been awestruck by the similarities between some multilevel SEMICON displays and the Broadway staging of Les MisŽrables.

A few days after SEMICON West closed, we asked some visitors and exhibitors to share their impressions with us.

During "slow" years, the number of foreign visitors seems slight. That was not the case this year. "International visitors were in abundance, showing how global our industry is," noted Tomonobu Noguchi, Electronics Asian Industry manager for Dow Corning, Midland, Mich.

Seth Alavi, president of SunSil Inc., noted-as did many others-that recessionary talk was absent this year.

"The upbeat tone of the show was clear evidence of the fantastic business climate we're experiencing across the board. Assembly and test is once again the focus of the key technical and business managers," Alavi said.

Appearing to make notable inroads at this year's San Jose portion were CSPs, wafer-level packaging and systems-in-a-package. These are being driven, he said, "by their increased performance and space savings."

Gary D. Smith, vice president of sales for Lambda Tech-nologies, said the need for smaller packaging designs continues as wireless devices and the Internet supplant personal computers as the industry's primary drivers."

From left, Karl Suss' Dr. Dietrich Tonnies, Jeffrey Dumas and Gilbert Lecarpentier discuss show trends.	From left, Scott Sylvester and Tom Reynolds of ATS Services Co. with Wally Crookes of Alphatec Semiconductor Packaging, Bangkok, during a lull in show traffic.

'Greater Interest in 100% Inspection'

With the continuing move toward ever-smaller devices comes the need to inspect for every defect on every package, said Earl H. Rideout, president of RVSI's Semiconductor Equipment Group. "We saw much greater interest in 100% inspection. This follows, of course, from the continuing trend toward smaller, more complex devices, along with greater customer pressure for quality assurance." Rideout added that contract assemblers have been "particularly quick" to adopt 100% inspection across a broad product mix.

The modest troop from Amkor Technology Inc., Chandler, Ariz., the world's largest packaging foundry, elected to respond mostly without individual attribution.

Don Sireci, product engineering manager for Advantest, talks about new test system developments.	From left, DB Design Group's John Love, Chris Wilmoth and President Derek Bowers announce the company's new partnership with Micro-Mechanics, Singapore.

Amkor agreed with Alavi that interest in wafer-level packaging (and CSPs) is gaining. "It was clear that anything related to RF was hot. We noticed that there was not much emphasis on laminate packaging-probably reflecting the maturity level of that business."

The Amkor constituent described Kulicke & Soffa's 35- micron ball bonder with 0.5 mil wire as "probably the single most impressive assembly advancement" at the show.

"The show had a very positive flavor to it-not reflective of the recent comments by a few securities analysts," Amkor's Ken Jensen, attending the show for the first time, said.

'Upbeat Conditions'

Tom Reynolds, president of ATS Services, San Jose, Alphatec's North American sales and marketing arm, agreed that the show mirrored the current upbeat conditions of the industry.

The RVSI booth reached nearly to McEnery Hall's ceiling.	Steve Wigley, vice president-Asian Operations for RVSI, describes how the vision system works on a new RVSI machine.

"On the product and services front, there were high levels of interest in low leadcount packages-both the older standard PDIP and SOIC, as well as newer leadless plastic packages for high performance analog, linear and logic," Reynolds said.

"Interest in BGA packages, however, was much lower than last year-except for very high ballcounts." The decline in interest in BGAs and QFPs, Reynolds believes, may be a reflection of adequate (or excess) installed capacity. "Turnkey assembly and test continue to be high on the agenda," Reynolds added.

If you had any doubts about how rapidly flip-chip was gaining momentum, SEMICON West would have quickly dispelled them.

'The Buzz'

"The backend buzz in San Jose seemed to focus on three areas: e-commerce, ultrafine pitch wire bonding and new, enabling flip-chip and substrate technologies," said Alex Oscilowski, office of the president, Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Willow Grove, Pa.

Anthony Kong, product engineering manager at STATS, Singapore, noted that "the introduction of 300 mm wafers, shown at various exhibits, demonstrates that companies are seriously looking at the early synchronization of backend technologies with the front end."

Kong added that "flip-chips, as a technology, have shown improvement in infrastructure support compared to just a year ago. From OEM design, merchant bumping and assembly, each domain has shown tremendous advances supporting flip-chip interconnection."

Visitor Wayne Moore, president of Signetics High Technology Inc., San Jose, (left) discusses test with Jim Zaccarone of Credence Systems.	Amenities, such as masseuses and masseurs, were available in the McEnery corridor.

Many equipment vendors echoed comments from the assembly and test services sector.

Frank Murch, Asymtek's director of marketing, Carlsbad, Calif., observed that "semiconductor backend manufacturing has become increasingly important with the emergence of flip-chip technology.

"Until recently, underfill was identified as a barrier to the widespread adoption of flip-chips, due to lengthy flow-out times. All that has changed," said Murch, with the introduction of flip-chip dispensing equipment offering improved throughput and better process control.

Asymtek's Steve Adamson noted that "flip-chip manufacturing has broken out of the lab and into the early adopter stage. It's gaining momentum in the IC and board assembly markets and will grow at a remarkable rate over the next few years."

"As a general comment, every senior executive from both the merchant semiconductor companies and the subcontractor assembly groups voiced similar optimism about continued growth through 2002," said Lonny Plummer, executive vice president of Alphasem AG.

Visiting the more than 600 San Jose exhibitors was a feat few people accomplished over the three days.	Stanley T. Myers, SEMI president, scans the show directory.

'Cyclical Trend Will Continue'

"All, however, did express the same warning: The industry's cyclical trend will continue. That means the industry will continue to be a roller coaster. Accordingly, knowing when the next downturn will occur will offer some companies a real advantage-whether this happens in 2002 or 2003," Plummer added.

Richard Boulanger, vice president of Universal Instruments' Advanced Semiconductor Assembly Division (Alphasem's owner), Binghamton, N.Y., said the optimism expressed by customers for the second half of this year was a "notable" trend.

"Specifically, interest was high for placement solutions for flip-chip-on-flex, hard disk applications and MCMs for cell phone uses. Another observation is that opto-electronic components have gained momentum over the last few months and are expanding very quickly from a small niche market to a much larger customer base."

Joseph Zhou, director of marketing for semiconductor products at Speedline Technologies, Franklin, Mass., said large contract manufacturers will continue to absorb more and more of the OEM production capacity.

Zhou added that new technologies are being considered "only if they directly and positively impact manufacturing productivity."

Larry Furman, program manager-Interconnection Business Unit, Texas Instruments, describes TI's new test and burn-in sockets.	Malee Lowchareonkul, sales manager and Richard McKee, director of marketing and sales for Hana Microelectronics Inc., chat with Victor Liew (right), Cypress Semiconductor, San Jose.

'Planets Were Lined Up'

Phil Davies, president of Allteq Industries, Livermore, Calif., summed up this year's show nicely: "It seemed like all the planets were lined up for this SEMICON. Everyone I talked to was busy, making money and having a great time."

On the second day of the show, Davies said, he began taking his own "very informal and very unscientific" survey.

He asked 20 industry veterans how long business would continue at this level. "As they were talking, I heard this little voice in my head, Ôjust you wait, what goes up must come crashing down!'"

The answers, said Davies, "ranged from six to 24 months, for an average of 14.7 months. I haven't heard the little voice for a few days now, so I'm just going to enjoy the party, at least for 14.7 months!"