Motorola fires up MCM show

Electronic News, April 7, 1997 by Bernard Levine

Potential customers have reportedly been prodding Motorola to join Intel, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments and other semiconductor houses which have already made major commitments to support bare die semiconductor packaging forays at OEMs and contractors. Motorola will offer various fast static RAMs in die form itself, while die distributor Chip Supply, Inc. has been authorized to offer specialty microprocessor sales in non-standard formats, featuring PowerPC and the MC68000 series MPUs for defense and other applications screened to extended temperatures.

Also sparking great interest here were intensified efforts and cooperation by various worldwide organizations to promote and standardize MCMs and related bare die technologies. Joint efforts by various consortia, industry trade groups and government agencies to speed up the adoption of numerous bare die packaging schemes, including flip chip and chip-on-board, as well as MCMs, were widely discussed here last week. Officials from Sematech, Microelectronics & Computer Technology Corp. (MCC) and the Electronic Industries Association (EIA) reportedly huddled privately here with their counterparts from the European Commission and the Electronic Industries Association of Japan (EIAJ), urging international cooperation in developing worldwide standards for known good die. Representatives of both the European Commission's Good-Die project and the EIAJ have agreed to attend and present their goals and findings at a Known Good Die Industry Assessment Workshop being organized by MCC, Sematech and EIA for Sept. 17-19 in Napa Valley, Calif.

EIAJ officials indicated here last week that the Japanese industry is eagerly interested in developing known good die and other MCM and bare chip technologies, even though Japanese firms have also been heavily involved in developing chip-scale packages (CSPs). The EIAJ is working on a roadmap for MCMs/known good die, and plans to publish it around September.

CSPs, which have gained a lot of recent attention, are considered traditionally packaged parts and are expected to compete with MCMs and other bare die approaches for future business, although many conference attendees here claimed the technologies will ultimately prove complementary. It was often said here that there should be plenty of future opportunities for all, especially to meet the space- and weight-constrained requirements of mini-notebooks and other ultraportable products. Both MicroModule Systems and Fujitsu have targeted those markets with separate Pentium-based MCMs featuring MMX technology they introduced in recent weeks and displayed here. Those MCMs were made possible by Intel's recent addition of MMX Pentiums in die form as part of Intel's SmartDie program begun several years ago.

A growing number of companies showed MCMs, bare die or related support offerings and products in the exhibit halls here, while the technical papers revealed a host of major OEMs already using multichip modules in products, or actively exploring such possibilities.

Customers have been asking for bare die offerings, "especially for fast static RAMs," said Bob Bolger, Motorola product manager for the Advanced SRAM Packaging group, based in Austin, Texas, but there have been concerns that the die meet the same levels as packaged ICs. Motorola has been working on the product for two and a half years, and has now developed a "TrueDie" line of known good die SRAMs offering "one level. The same quality and reliability as our packaged part," Mr. Bolger said. "Now we feel we have a good, robust, economical process. We did not have that before."

Also interviewed here, Andrea Koritala, in Motorola product marketing at the Austin Fast Static RAM division, said many customers with very small products are "almost forced" to go to die or other down-sized approaches, "because of size and weight, in order to shrink the package." While the SRAM die introduced last week is priced higher than equivalent packaged parts, she said the price may be almost the same in one to two years. "All these problems can be solved with volumes," she said.

The SRAM die products will be built in Austin at a new Bump Assembly and Test facility (called BAT 1) recently completed, an integrated factory for all back-end processing to support known good die and MCMs, and "for anything using bump technology," Mr. Bolger said. In the future, Motorola plans to offer fast statics and processor in the same MCM, but that is reportedly quite a ways off.

Mr. Bolger noted, "The explosion in MCMs has been announced many times in the past 10 years. One of the reasons it has not taken off is that there has not been a ready supply of known-good-die suppliers. We feel fast static RAMs is one of the key enablers to open up the marketplace."

Motorola's Microprocessor & Memory Technologies group unveiled a broad line of TrueDie known good die (KGD) SRAM products here last week. "TrueDie allows our customers to solve the physical space and timing problems inherent in leading-edge designs," Mr. Bolger said. Suppliers "have been offering bare die products for some time," said Bruce Atwell, PC/telecom product operations manager for the Fast Static RAM division, "but until now, no one has been able to successfully operate a high-volume memory production line in this manner. Customers who have seen our technology and resulting products have told us they are blown away by our work."'