Ken Cavallaro, Business Manager, Semiconductor Packaging News

The iMAPS device packaging conference continued yesterday in Scottsdale, AZ with technical presentations and exhibitor displays. About 500 industry professionals attended the "Device Packaging Conference" and were prepared for dozens of technical sessions on 3D packaging, MEMS and Wafer Level Packaging.

One of the presentations was from Rich Rice, senior vice president of sales, North America from ASE Group. Rich spoke about their business of subcontracting assembly and test for the world’s largest semiconductor companies.

He discussed the disruptive packaging technology developing in the market and included a chart showing the benefit of packaging technologies for the end users with smaller, lower cost, and lower power devices. One of the key examples Rich discussed was the use of copper wire bonding compared to using gold wire.

He said the use of copper wire bonding can lower unit costs by 10-15% which is significant if they can perfect the process with softer copper wire, and inert bonding environment with a blend of hydrogen and nitrogen.

I also had a chance to visit with about 25 exhibitors from the conference and most companies were seeing significant increases in business. Some were also having problems with deliveries becoming stretched as factories seem caught off guard by the rapid recovery.

Many factories are working overtime to meet demand, but much of the delay is pushed into the supply chain to feed materials to the factories for final assembly. Several exhibitors told us they are having record bookings and the outlook looks very strong for 2010.

iMAPS did a good job with this conference and after speaking with many visitors, they were pleased with the technical sessions and would return to future events.