IWLPC 2009: The Road to Recovery

By Francoise von Trapp, Contributing Editor

For once, the experts can’t say it enough: recovery is on its way, it’s here, we’ve made it, we survived, and it happened faster than expected, it might slip into a W but not necessarily. In general, the tone at the 2009 IWLPC, October 27-30, 2009, at the Santa Clara Marriott, was upbeat and positive… at last.  For its part, SMTA did a stellar job of gathering big names from across the industry to spread the good word, resulting in a better turnout overall than last year.  Conference organizer, Melissa Serres reports the event drew a combined total of 482 attendees (conference, tutorial, and exhibits-only) versus 428 last year; an achievement almost unheard of since last year’s economic debacle.

Technology innovation continues to drive this industry, noted Jim Walker of Gartner Dataquest, during Tuesday morning’s Marketing and Business Analyst panel.  “it took 5 quarters in 2001 to readjust the market, it’s taking less than 2 quarters to readjust this time; it’s a matter of supply and demand” he said. “But when it comes to technology driving the market, that will continue for at least 10 years until the question of the viability of Moore’s law comes into play.”  Walker talked about what he called the man/ machine interface that makes function of technology intuitive and self evident. Future issues will be shaped by this and how we interact with it. Packaging will enable all these applications. “That’s the goal from a top level standpoint,” explained Walker.  “The point is to simplify our life.”

Offering the European perspective and strategy for future growth beyond the recovery was Rolf Aschenbrenner, Ph.D., of the Fraunhofer IZM in Berlin, Germany.  Reporting on a recent symposium of European companies including Bosch, NXP, and others, he noted that they all said they would be back in better shape than before.  He noted that there is a general move towards more complex technologies such as MEMS, wafer-level packaging (WLP) and 3D integration, as they require more diversification than standard CMOS processes. “Shifting away from classical towards the modern world is safer for the future,” he noted, and less likely to meet with competition in Asia.

For her part, Jan Vardaman called the WLP market “today’s bright spot”, noting that advanced packaging technologies, including BGAs, CSPs, and other traditional configurations are still showing growth despite the recession. “It’s still a good place to be.” she said. In particular, WLP was the only type of device to see a growth in shipments for 2009. Additionally, the growing demand for high pin count WLP driving demand to fan-out WLP.  

Both Jeff Perkins of Yole Développment, and Bill Bottoms, of NanoNexus and iNEMI concur that the 3D market is a very good place to be right now. “There wasn’t much of a downturn experienced in this space because this is all about innovation,” noted Perkins.  He said by 2015, 3D packaging will be one of many solutions available. “All technologies will continue to exist,” he added. “Nothing is going to replace anything”.  Basing his perspective on consumer demand for higher functioning products in small form factors, Bottoms went so far as to say that the only path to deliver what the consumer wants is through 3D system integration. “We’re coming to an era in the electronics manufacturing where the only way to achieve what we need is through the 3rd dimension.” he said. 

In summary, Bottoms predicts that 3D WLP will be enabled for complex systems, and as standards and new processes and materials are introduced, the price elastic growth of the industry will continue even after Moore’s Law scaling reaches its limit. It looks like the industry is well on its road to recovery, with innovation once again leading the charge.