-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueLevel Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
Embedded Design Techniques
Our expert contributors provide the knowledge this month that designers need to be aware of to make intelligent, educated decisions about embedded design. Many design and manufacturing hurdles can trip up designers who are new to this technology.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
A Tale of Three Innovative Interconnection Companies and Their Impact on Printed Circuits
October 23, 2006 |Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
The article below has been re-edited and annotated from one submitted for publication in ChipScale Review. CSR is a magazine that serves the Semiconductor Packaging Industry, which is intimately "connected" with the Printed Circuit Industry. The PCB annotations are in italics.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
HSM
A Tale of Three Innovative Interconnection Companies--Tessera, Form Factor, Neoconix and their impact on Printed Circuits
by Harvey Miller, Fabfile Online
FOREWORD
Tessera [Tessera.com] and Form Factor [FormFactor.com] roots go back to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />IBMResearchYorktownHeights, before 1990, where two brilliant scientists, Drs. Tom DiStefano and Dr. Igor Khandros worked together and dreamed of starting their own company to do great things in interconnection technology. Their partnership did not survive, but the company did. Tessera became a classic success story under DiStefano. Khandros created another success story, Form Factor. Neoconix' [Neoconix.com] genesis is more recent. The following article describes the main elements of their stories and the impacts on Interconnection, Printed Circuits in particular.
The Common Elements
1. Each is making unique contributions to reducing the Speed Gap between integrated circuits and their interconnections--from chip to box to the world.
2. Each developed its approach to that goal coming from different electronic circuit interconnection places, by a combination of brilliant insight, ingenious inventiveness, flexibility, and serendipity--right place, right time, with the right stuff.
3. Coincidentally, the seeds of each migrated from New YorkState to fruition in the San Francisco-San Jose Bay area of California. In each case, it wasn't just a geographic move but played an essential role in bringing just the right people together to make it all possible.
There is no Moore's Law for Interconnection, multiplying density every year.
IC dimensions are moving to sub 50 nanometers. By contrast, Interconnection--rigid and flexible printed circuits and connectors have great difficulty moving to feature spacings below 50 micrometers. Semiconductor manufacturing is a combination of chemical processes, mainly in one plant, under the control of one IDM or fabless company. By contrast, Interconnection and Test are characterized by many discrete manufacturing steps in many plants, by many companies in the supply chain. Compressing Interconnection space and time is the genius brought by each of the companies.
Tessera early on had the germ of its major contribution, the interposer. Today it's the flexible circuit interconnect from the matrix of die pads to Ball Grid Array substrate, eliminating the lead frame and the wire bonds to dual-in-line peripheral pads. The interposer was an agent of BGA and flip chip market ascendance. By 1995 in San Jose, Tom DiStefano realized the interposer's broader application potential. Tessera built an IP mountain of interposer technology and practically invented wafer scale packaging, a major application. Company sales exceed $100M, 2006, mostly from licenses. The growth path is clear.
Igor Khandros moved his company, Form Factor, to Livermore in 1993. With the move came the fortuitous alliance with Bill Davidow, venture capitalist and Intel alumnus, famous for "Operation Crunch" that secured Intel's microprocessor domination. Though earliest patents indicate intent to produce compliant contacts for IC packaging, its MicroSpring (TM), formed by wire bonder, ultimately made possible vertical wafer probe cards that achieve 175 micron pitch and much shorter, equal distance paths. The horizontal cantilever probe fails to meet the dense, high speed requirements of DRAMS and microprocessors. Also, Form Factor probe technology enables wafer level test, just as Tessera enables wafer level assembly. So the two companies' products complement constructively in the marketplace. Company sales exceed $300M, 2006, going up, as the probe card market grows, along with Form Factor's piece of that pie.
Neoconix--New Kid on the Block
Neoconix roots go back to AMD's Submicron Development Center in the mid-1990's, where two engineers, Dirk Brown and John Williams, working together on chip-level interconnects realized that many of the system performance bottlenecks were occurring at the packaging and PCB level. They went to CornellUniversity to join a company called HCD that was working on novel connector and PCB technologies. HCD's CEO, Professor Che-Yu Li, was a renowned interconnect and packaging expert and had previously mentored Dirk for his PhD in Materials Science at Cornell. Dirk ran sales & marketing and John ran engineering & manufacturing for HCD, leading to proprietary design wins and licensing deals with some of the largest semiconductor and electronics manufacturers in the industry. In early 2003, Dirk and John founded the forerunner of Neoconix based on an inspiration that merges the worlds of printed circuit fabrication, chem. milling, and connectors. Here are Dirk Brown' s words, "Our focus is on our PCBeam(TM) technology based on our proprietary PCB-based manufacturing processes to make electrical connectors. We believe that we have the best dimensional scalability, electrical performance, and cost structure in the industry for a broad range of connectors including interposers, FFC connectors, mezzanine connectors, and sockets."
I toured the Neoconix facility May 2006 when they were shipping qualification orders and again in October when it was production orders. In that 12,000 SF building, employees were busy fabricating printed circuit boards and chem milling contact sheets. The contacts were formed and etched apart after insertion between pre-drilled printed circuit layers and pressed. In summary, here are some of the results
. concentration on land grid array sockets today, taking advantage of fine dimensions, low parasitics, good contact wipe, and above all, low profile
. ability to circuitize the board, embed discrete or distributed bypass capacitors and terminating resistors
. differentiate contacts by photolithography and etching into signal, ground, and voltage--no piece parts to individually assemble
. overcome the scaling down disadvantages of stamp and form by photolithography and etch
. particularly appropriate for the low profile requirements of flex circuit connectors
The implications of the Neoconix technologies are nothing less than a complete shift of today's interconnection paradigm including a whole new way of making connectors.
Low profile connectors, thick as a printed circuit, are just what portable products need.
Direct PCB Impacts
Form Factor owns more than half of the Probe Card market, making it the major customer and reducing the supply base.
Tessera flexible interposer technology was used in 2.9 billion IC units in 2005, growing at over 25%/year.
Neoconix technology involves a new source of PCB added-value. The actual connector body is a printed circuit, replacing molded part. It invites mergers between PCB companies and Chem Milling companies. The company is considering licensing. The potential connector applications are too broad for a venture-stage company to do it all.
Perspective
There is continuing path of innovation in interconnection technology and there are small companies that may one day surpass our 3 examples as they have surpassed others before them. The Interconnection bottleneck will continue to challenge. New convergence forms are waiting for discovery.About the AuthorHarvey Miller has been watching the printed circuit industry for over 30 years as economist-- U of Michigan, analyst, and database creator. Before that he built economic input-output models of the electronics industry for 10 years. He began his electronics career as a components engineer for computer and telecom OEMs, Burroughs and GTE among them. At present he's putting it all together, generating powerful marketing database tools for the global printed circuit board industry at www.FabfileOnline.com.