The Packaging and Test Group of the Fab Owners Association, (Cupertino, CA) held its first official meeting on February 4th. This was just one of the meetings held as part of the third annual FOA Collaborative Forum in Santa Clara, CA.
The fourteen inaugural FOA packaging and test group (FOA-PT) members heard a presentation on the “Roadmap of Packaging Things” by Bill Bottoms, who represented ITRS, and an update on packaging and test standards from Paul Trio of SEMI.
The PT members then joined with the “Device Maker” (DM) members, senior manufacturing managers from IDM companies, to hear some of the collaborative presentations during the DM Only portion of the Forum.
One representative presentation of benefit to both the fab (front-end) and the packaging (backend) managers was a joint project by ON Semiconductor and Plasma-Therm reporting on the installation of stealth wafer dicing in some of the ON Semis facilities. They reported that stealth dicing enabled ON Semi to reduce the saw street widths thus enabling them to fabricate 20% more die per wafer ,increasing overall fab capacity.
As is the FOA custom, an evening social event was held at the Faultline Brewery with over 100 DMs, PTs, and Associate Members (AMs) enjoying the opportunity to network.
The February 5th meeting day included all members who heard select supplier members (AMs) present their solutions and propose new collaborative projects for future presentation.
The FOA-PT Group membership is targeted towards companies with operating semiconductor packaging and test operations. This includes companies with captive operations (Pure-Play Fabs and IDMs) and packaging service companies (OSATs). The inaugural PT Group agreed that it would be a significant member benefit to have access to an industry wide packaging and test cost benchmark. One of the FOA members, Max International Engineering Group announced the launch of such a study with participation of several large IDMs, OSATs and FOA members. Following up on the FOA-PT Group request, FOA’s Executive Director, L.T. Guttadauro has been able to secure a deeply discounted participation fee for FOA members. Other PT member requests for inclusion in future meetings include information on emerging packaging opportunities, especially 2.5D and 3D packaging and more “game-changing” technology disclosures, such as stealth dicing.
The next meeting of the FOA PT Group will be in May in San Jose. Location and date will be announced shortly. For more information contact the FOA-PT VP, Phil Marcoux at phil@waferfabs.org or 650-274-7762. ~ P.M.
