IEMT big Success at Semi West
The 30th International Electronics Manufacturing Technology
Symposium (IEMT'05)
was held in San Francisco on July 11-12, just before the Semicon
West show. The
IEMT, an international forum on electronics components and systems
manufacturing, was a joint effort between SEMI and the IEEE CPMT
society. The
theme addressed this year involved "Manufacturing at the
Wafer Level". About
70 people attended the conference featuring invited talks on wafer
level
packaging, packaging for Cu low-k, system-in-packages (SiP), and
testing of
memory devices.
Four professional development courses were offered on July
11, but due a
technicality, only three were actually held. Attendance was as
follows:
Introduction to Flip Chip Technology - A user's guide by Dev Gupta:
31;
Advanced packaging to today's solutions by Ray Fillion: 54;
Introduction to
nanotechnology by Florin Ciontu and Bernard Courtois: 46.
Sanjeev Sathe of ASE started the conference with an overview
of the "Evolution
of wafer level CSP in high volume implementation". Extension
of wafer level CSP
to higher functionality applications and the challenges involved
was covered by
Luu Nguyen of National Semiconductor in "Beyond low pin count
WLP". Challenges
in memory testing with a potential for WLP applications were covered
by Beth
Skidmore of Micron Technology in "Bare die testing - DRAM/PSRAM".
Issues in
packaging Cu/low k devices were outlined by Kishor Desai of LSI
Logic in
"Packaging challenges for Cu low-k silicon technologies."
Before the luncheon talk, the 2005 IEEE Electronics Manufacturing
Technology
Award was given to Bob Pfahl of iNEMI for "his prominent
role in reducing
environmental impact from electronic manufacturing processes and
fostering
collaboration within the manufacturing technology community."
Afterwards, the
luncheon speaker, Tom Gregorich of Qualcomm, covered SiP and RF
integration
challenges in "SiP solutions."
Deborah Keller of Intel highlighted the value propositions
of SiP in "Rebirth
of SiP." "Implementation of chip scale modules in wireless
mobile devices", and
especially strategies for lowering module costs, was addressed
by Yinon Degani
of Sychip. Closing out the afternoon focus on SiP, Mike Buckley
of Henkel
Technologies outlined issues involved with "Development of
a SiP test package,
and the evaluation of a SiP material set".
Co-located with a number of other events organized by SEMI,
conference attendees
were also able to benefit from the Semicon West Keynote Speaker,
Dr. Tien Wu,
President of ASE Americas and VP of Strategic Marketing and Sales,
Europe,
talking about the state of the semiconductor industry in "SEMI
Play or SEMI
Syndrome?"
IEMT'06 is planned to be in San Jose with a Call For Papers
to be issued
shortly.
-- submitted by Luu Nguyen, National Semiconductor Inc
Figure 1: Sign attracting SemiCon West attendees to technical symposium
Figure 2: Award being given to Bob Pfahl by Jan Vardaman (TechSearch Inc) with Bill Chen hosting