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The Inside Line
December 31, 1969 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Intel Inside Out
CHANDLER, Ariz. — Intel recently held an assembly technology open house to show what's new for this industry-leading microprocessor and advanced packaging firm.
Nasser Grayeli, director of assembly technology development and vice president of the Technology Manufacturing Group , explained that the Chandler campus comprises seven buildings, with approximately 1,000 employees whose mission is to identify and develop total interconnect solutions to meet the company's business needs. In Chandler, the company focuses on flip chip, CPU R&D and building the core competency base.
From product design to silicon process technology to packaging technology and final assembly and test, each process must take the others into consideration. New lab equipment, such as large wind tunnels for examining flow characterization, Moiré interferometric strain imaging equipment and lab tools for characterizing heat sinks filled the factory. In the Substrate Technology Research Lab, equipment for plating, sputtering, lithography, plasma etch and lamination were in use. Power delivery and heat removal requires enhanced packaging and substrates as well as careful material characterization. Collabor-ative R&D occured between chip designers and packaging researchers.
The packaging industry faces two main challenges: performance and density. Intel takes leadership in the 90 nm, low-k inner layer dielectric, solder thermal interface material and high-k dielectric areas. Final packages now use lead-free solder, and feature increased densities through folded stacked chip scale packages. Stacking chips requires reduced die thickness, thin substrates and reduced ball height, yet assured board-to-solder joint reliability and elimination of all spacers. Wire bonding to floppy die overhang and minimizing wire bond pad area create an assembly process change.
Intel announced that it has begun conversion of a 200 mm wafer fabrication facility to a 300 mm facility in Fab 12 located on campus, allowing the company to produce more than twice the capacity at lower cost. — Gail Flower
FEINFOCUS Acquisition Covers Spectrum of X-ray
STAMFORD, Conn. — Microfocus X-ray system maker FEINFOCUS was recently acquired by COMET AG, a Switzerland-based conventional X-ray tube maker to take advantage of the fit between the two organizations.
"It's rare to find a partnership that is so perfectly complementary, with so little overlap," says Lance A. Scott, CEO of FEINFOCUS. "The acquisition was founded on the right reasons: market drivers." These drivers include trends toward miniaturization and 3-D computed tomography, as well as the move away from film-based imaging, he adds.
According to FEINFOCUS, COMET is a supplier of conventional high-voltage, high-vacuum X-ray tubes for non-destructive testing, security, analytics, food inspection and irradiation, and semiconductor applications, with more than 50 years of experience.
FEINFOCUS had been looking for a partner that matched and extended its corporate strategy of leadership in microfocus and nanofocus X-ray solutions to capitalize on the pending upturn in the industry, Scott explains. While the two companies' technologies fit together to cover the market, there also is a good cultural fit between them, he adds.
While COMET is more of a component manufacturer, the company has a stated corporate objective to get more involved in the systems side, Scott says. "Their OEM philosophy led them to design products that have an ease of integration and production."
COMET has a presence in Shanghai. FEINFOCUS had plans for an office there, but the acquisition helped expedite the process, Scott says. The announcement also coincided with FEINFOCUS' debut of the COUGAR-VXP (Versatile X-ray Platform), at NEPCON Shanghai in April.
"Our global headquarters in Germany will become a center of excellence for system development, while our offices in the Americas will clearly be enhanced by the acquisition," Scott says. — Christine F. Della Monaca