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by Francisco J. Ibañez, Technologies for Components and Subsystems, DGIII F3.
Presented at the Opening session of the 2nd European Conference on Electronic Pakcaging Technology. Essen. Germany on January 31, 1996
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my pleasure to be at the opening of EUPAC '96, a conference is concerned with packaging and interconnection technologies, technologies of major importance to electronic product design and manufacturing which is at the heart of the Information Technologies Programme.
We are witnessing a unique phenomenon in the short history of microelectronics. The situation of a semiconductor industry with absolute revenues and relative growth rates never reached before reflects two basic facts: First, the proliferation of electronic products that are receiving greater market acceptance, and second the continuous increase in value of the microelectronics content in those products. One common element in each of these market successes is the use of cost-effective assembly technologies. Many electronic products succeed in the market because they make consistent use of techniques that combine performance, reliability, miniaturisation and cost in the right proportion. This applies to every market segment, from consumer to telecommunication, from computers to automotive. However, the borders between these markets are blurring and their characterisation by a single attribute (be it high performance, low cost or high reliability) is becoming obsolete. No product in any market segment in today's electronic business can enjoy the privilege of being developed and manufactured on a purely performance basis or on a purely cost basis.
These days we have seen in the news that what is probably the most popular component in the microelectronics industry, the Pentium microprocessor, will be using a different packaging technology. This is of course bad news for some who are going to lose large orders but for the packaging R&D community the fact that innovative approaches are adopted in industrial products is very positive and extremely encouraging. No doubt that cost/performance ratio has been a key factor, for Intel, in making this decision.
We at the European Commission, in the IT Programme and more particularly in Technologies for Components and Subsystems, appreciate the impact of packaging and interconnection in the development of competitive products and we are supporting activities in this area. Activities with sound objectives and with realistic plans for the industrial use of the results can only be the consequence of a strong collaboration between research and industry. Packaging and interconnection technologies are a first priority in our plan and will receive increasing attention. But you have to be aware that to better drive the technological developments our programme is shifting focus towards applications, and adaptation of existing technologies to enable them to meet the requirements of specific applications is becoming an important area of our work. Therefore we intend to maximise our impact by combining the effort in the development of process technologies and their utilisation in industrial applications.
In addition, competitive products and applications need to rely on a solid technology supplier base and therefore projects aiming at making available packaging and interconnection technologies in Europe for volume manufacturing is at the focus of our programme.
To facilitate the access to advanced technologies at European manufacturers we have launched some initiatives with the objectives of reinforcing the infrastructure of the microelectronics industry in Europe. This is the case of EUROPRACTICE that has established services for ASICs, MCMs and microsystems technologies. These services are able to take users of those technologies through the various stages, from design to manufacturing to testing, ensuring an effective access to those technologies.
Another initiative, the FIRST USERS ACTION intends to support users in all industrial sectors who are willing to use a given microelectronic technology for the first time. Basically our objective with these two initiatives is to minimise the technical risk, by offering you a service that provides all the necessary technical support, and to minimise the economic risk by financially supporting the cost which you incurred when accessing a new technology.
Additionally, an action on Known-Good-Die has recently started with the objective of providing European system manufacturers access to bare die sources at a worldwide level.
A number of projects on technology development are on-going in which significant results been achieved. This includes multichip modules and single chip packages.
Finally, I would like to emphasise today the work of NETPACK, an action established in 1993 that has been able to catalyse the interest and the attention of the European packaging community. Two of the initiatives that I have just mentioned (Europractice-MCM and Known-Good-Die Action) have been incubated in NETPACK and a substantial contribution in the areas of MCM (design, manufacturing , testing, education, and KGD provision) are expected from them. I would like to acknowledge the personal effort of Hans Hentzell and Mike Roughton in making these two actions possible. I would also like to acknowledge the excellent work and the enthusiasm of Professor Reichl and his team in coordinating NETPACK, and I am pleased to announce that this action has been awarded with a two-year extension by the European Commission.
Other R&D programmes, at European or national level, are currently providing support to work in this area. A closer cooperation with these programmes will contribute to optimise the use of the resources available and to have a stronger impact. Those attending yesterday's workshop could see the emphasis that Brite-Euram is putting in interconnection materials and processes. As a first move to strengthen this cooperation I can inform you that there are plans for the two programmes (Brite-Euram and Esprit) to have in the future common calls, common evaluation and common selection of proposals in the area of packaging and interconnection.
To conclude, let me emphasise that the continuous support that we have given to packaging and interconnection, in its various facets, in the last few years will continue and grow in the future. Closer links will be established with related technologies (semiconductor processing, design, microsytems, manufacturing equipment, testing, etc.). But the future of this area depends mainly on the capability of the European industry and research organisations to establish powerful partnerships able to achieve significant results, and more importantly on the capability to transform these technological developments into industrial successes.
Thank you very much.
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