Advanced Packaging - THOUGHTS ON THE NEWS

Wafer-level Update from MEPTEC
News Analysis
The latest MEPTEC conference gave a very thorough update on where things stand in the world of wafer-level packaging. We all know the basic story of the efficiencies associated with creating the "package" on a wafer rather than with singulated chips, but this conference had some of the real specifics about how it will work -- and how it is already working.

Conference Chair Tom Di Stefano of Decision Track gave the introductory talk, "Wafer Level Packaging Takes Shape," and one key insight that I took away from that explains how chip and package designers might really start working together in earnest. He pointed out that the power and ground distribution on all but the smallest chips becomes a real concern with the shrinking interconnect geometries on chips. According to Di Stefano, the RC delay issues are an increasing problem because the resistance scales inversely with the square of the lithographic dimension -- the on-chip wire is both narrower and thinner -- but the capacitance is roughly constant because the width of the line and the distance to the next layer are changing by the same ratio. Consequently, RC delay is accelerating faster than overall chip technology.

The solution, according to Di Stefano, is to take the power/ground distribution up in the packaging levels in a wafer-level package. This allows much more flexibility and better performance because of the geometries that are possible in the interconnect in the packaging layers. This means that the people designing the chip need to know how the packaging works, and they must be designed together. Perhaps this will be the specific function that gets chip and package designers interacting more.

On the other end of the spectrum, Luu Nguyen of National Semiconductor gave an update on its MicroSMD wafer-level package, which is one of the pioneering efforts in WLP. Most interestingly, his talk had plenty of information on how to surface mount these devices, which illustrates how the whole supply chain needs to understand wafer-level packaging. Let's hope that the right audience was there!

Along with Nguyen's usual good presentation, Bob Million had an excellent review of the many wafer-level burn-in systems in existence. Among the many efforts discussed were Motorola/Gore/TEL, Matsushita, FormFactor, Gryphics, and Aehr Test/NHK/Electroglas. With wafer-level burn-in and test probably providing even greater leverage than wafer-level packaging processes, this is an important area to watch.

And, once again, hats off to MEPTEC and its active advisory board for putting together another excellent one-day focused symposium. I'm sure that others who attended feel like they now have a good understanding of the key issues in wafer-level packaging.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 28)

'Deskilling' X-ray Inspection at Dage
News Analysis
The last work-related stop on my vacation in England was a visit to Dage Precision Industries in Aylesbury, about an hour train ride north of London. Dage recently expanded its scope to include X-ray inspection equipment, and its new approach includes "deskilling" the process so that nearly anyone can run it. A demonstration of the ease and speed of the system was impressive.

Dage has had the interesting problem of being the market leader in a mature sector -- bond testing. There are certainly new twists to that all the time -- Dage recently introduced a bump shear tester for 300 mm wafers, for example -- but the room for growth was limited for Dage. Managing director Paul Walter told me that they asked their customers what other test & inspection related needs could use some new suppliers. Suggestions included optical inspection and scanning acoustic microscopy, but the technology that was mentioned, and Dage jumped on, was X-ray inspection.

Walter said that the complaint he heard was that the existing X-ray systems were expensive and complicated, reflecting their origins as scientific equipment rather than production tools. After development work and the purchase of MediXtec, a German manufacturer of open X-ray tubes, Dage is now in the X-ray inspection business. A tour of the facilities included a stop in a new building where Dage is expanding the production efforts for the equipment, so they are finding some success in spite of the industry slump.

The "deskilling" effort was clear in the menu-driven system that runs the X-ray system much like anyone's home computer. Its point and click approach was quite intuitive, and it was easy to program exactly the magnification and angle of view for many successive inspection steps. Someone as "deskilled" as an editor could definitely make it work quickly.

This isn't just a case of "dumbing-down" the equipment, though; the technology is still there. Dage had a demonstration in which a 600 nm diameter calibrated wire was clearly imaged, demonstrating the sub-micron capability that seems to be the current Holy Grail for the industry.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 26)

Finally, the Next Killer App That Will Drive the Recovery
News Analysis
It took two weeks of brain-cleansing vacation, but it finally became clear to me what will drive the long-awaited recovery in the high-tech industries -- closed circuit television systems. During my vacation in England, I noticed many more CCTV systems than exist in the U.S., and a high-profile abduction there emphasized the benefits. With components from the semiconductor, optics, display and data storage industries, CCTV is the ideal driver for a broad-based recovery.

The biggest news story by far in the UK during August was the disappearance of two children and the ensuing search for them. Closed circuit television systems provided several clues in the case, and there was even some controversy because more systems were supposed to have been installed in the area where this occurred. While traveling around the country, I saw signs everywhere saying "CCTV in Operation".

Given the heightened security concerns in the U.S. and around the world -- because of both terrorism and predatory criminals -- I can easily envision such systems becoming increasingly popular. They already exist in many stores, companies, parking lots, etc., but imagine the potential benefits of having security cameras at every playground, school and street corner. It could conceivably become a routine security feature in typical residences if the volumes increase to the point where the cost is manageable for middle class citizens. There are certainly privacy issues that would be debated in the U.S., but the current environment might make citizens willing to sacrifice some privacy for enhanced security.

I'm not an expert on the technology, but a closed circuit TV systems must contain a significant quantity of electronics and data storage capability, and there would also be optics and display technology within it. The current systems that we see in security applications also allow plenty of room for growth from the low-resolution, black-and-white displays. Perhaps the most advanced imaging and display capability in your home security system will be the next great high-tech bragging-rights item.

It is perhaps a sad commentary that our economy might get a big boost from products like CCTVs that protect us from each other, but that seems to be an unavoidable feature of modern life.

Please send any other predictions to jeffd@pennwell.com, and remember, you heard it first at www.apmag.com!

A few days after I wrote the above item, we had some luggage stolen out of the lobby of our London hotel by a grab-and-run style thief, and I would bet a lot that the criminals who do that for a living know exactly which hotels have CCTVs. Ours did not. On our next trip, we will be sure to stay at a hotel with CCTV in the lobby. Maybe after the electronics recovery predicted above, we can safely assume that all hotels will be equipped with them!
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 23)

True Believers at DEK
News Analysis
I had the good fortune to visit DEK in Weymouth on England's Dorset coast recently while on vacation nearby. Like many companies, DEK talks about customer focus, teamwork, lean manufacturing and other such things, but after a tour through its facility, it was clear that the people at DEK take it very seriously. I saw as much evidence of these things in actual practice as I have seen anywhere.

DEK makes equipment that applies printing technology to many applications in surface mount technology and semiconductor packaging, and about half of its nearly one thousand employees work at a very nice location on the southern coast of England. John Knowles, chairman of DEK, gave me a tour of the plant there and showed me how they operate. The first thing I saw was a complete lack of offices. The chairman's cubicle looks like all of the others. Many companies talk about being open with its employees and everyone being treated equally, but this usually stops at some elevation in the organization chart. Not so at DEK -- everyone seemed to have exactly the same basic set-up, and all of the work areas were totally wide open. Knowles said that this practice not only contributes to the team atmosphere, but it also cuts down on the number of meetings that need to be scheduled.

For the production employees, there is an "annual hours" system that puts employees to use when they are needed and gives them time off during a lull. This gives the company the flexibility it needs to keep the business responding to the industry cycles and customer demand appropriately. On the manufacturing floor, there are no stores with components in inventory. DEK has a true just-in-time (JIT) approach that cuts down inventory costs while decreasing turn-around times. Again, many companies claim to do this, but they don't quite trust the supply chain to respond as needed, and they keep some amount of inventory.

Knowles also emphasized the importance of customer delivery dates -- he described them as "sacrosanct" -- and the customer delivery dates are shown prominently on the white board that shows all of the equipment being built at a given time. (That white board -- one of many in the DEK facility that keep people informed -- also had the nice touch of displaying the flag of the country of the customer.) Each machine being built has one person who is the "owner" of it to keep its production on track. There is also a book that gives the build instructions and requires each step to be signed off. This is nothing new, of course, but the detail and presentation in these books reflects the effort that they put into doing things as well as they possibly can.

All of these things might sound like trivial parts of the whole business, and I'm sure that you can find all of them scattered around other companies, but I was impressed that so many of these things were present and fully ingrained in one company. Richard Heimsch, the president of DEK, told me how the company's ISO9001 certification was not much of a stretch for them because they had the right practices already in place. If you assume that ISO9001 certification reflects something meaningful, then it represents a confirmation that DEK's approach of putting together all of those pieces is a sound one.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 21)

Creating an RF Niche in Wales
News Analysis
Atlantic Technology is an assembly and test subcontractor in the unlikely location of Wales in the UK, and I took the opportunity to visit there while vacationing in England recently. It was the busiest feeling subcontractor that I have visited in a while, and they have found some success by developing expertise in RF test. With that specialty in its portfolio, Atlantic has been able to land customers in markets that are doing well these days.

Atlantic Technology is located in a relatively new facility built specifically for semiconductor packaging in the 1995, and it is located -- appropriately enough -- on top of an old Welsh coal mine. The facility used to be an ASAT factory, but with a management buy-out in 1999, it became an independent subcontractor. Many people would say that you can't compete with Asian subcontractors with a facility in Europe, and there are certainly many examples of failed European subcontractors to support that view. The demise of the high-profile Belgian subcontractor CS2 recently is one that comes to mind, but Atlantic Technology is currently providing an existence proof that it can work in Europe.

Jeff Baloun, the managing director of Atlantic Technology, told me that Wales has the right combination of several important factors to make it work. The first concern about this business in Europe would be the cost of labor, but Baloun said that the labor cost is a pretty small fraction of the total cost these days anyway, especially with the amount of automation at Atlantic. Still, he said that the labor cost is favorable compared to other locations in Europe. He also said that the supply of good, educated people in Wales is strong, and that its proximity to several international airports is important too. The Welsh government is also friendly, although Baloun said that this is more along the lines of not making things complicated or difficult, rather than providing particular incentives or tax breaks.

So, Wales works, but a good technical edge is needed to succeed as well. Bernie Ramsay, the European sales director at Atlantic, told me that they have worked hard at creating a niche in RF test. This is a difficult technical area, and with some key people working in this area, they have been able to attract many customers with RF applications. Bluetooth products at Cambridge Silicon Radio provide one example, and Atlantic's slide showing all of its customer logos is quite full. Many of these customers are smaller, fabless RF IC design houses, and this has proven to be a good target market. tlantic Technology began turning a profit again recently with its focus in this field plus a portfolio of QFNs, BGAs, and other packages, so the strategy is working.

And, in case you are wondering, my family and I were traveling with some helpful cousins, so I wasn't being totally irresponsible by abandoning my wife with our four young children for a day while I hopped on a train to Wales.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 19)

Keeping Things in Perspective
News Analysis
I recently read a fascinating account of how world politics can affect our technology world. It is easy to think that high-tech companies can do whatever they want around the world -- there is so much money to be made -- but San Francisco Chronicle columnist Henry Norr dug out a story that's a sobering reminder that there is an awful lot more going on in the world than book-to-bill ratios and wafer fab starts.

Norr, an excellent technology columnist with a knack for explaining our crazy industry for a general audience, found out that an Intel wafer fab in the works at Qiryat Gat in Israel might be facing some hurdles. It is a complicated but fascinating story. Basically, Qiryat Gat has been in a unique situation, because Israel allowed certain concessions for it at the end of the 1948 war because it was surrounded but still occupied by Egyptian and Palestinian forces. As a result, the current legal status of the Intel site is murky.

Will the billions of dollars that Intel would spend on the Qiryat Gat fab make this situation go away? I wouldn't bet on it. With the tension and passions in the Middle East, the money and business opportunity might not make a difference. We should remember this lesson as the electronics industry expands into new locations around the globe.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 14)

Cooking the Books
News Analysis
I promised myself that I wouldn't write about the accounting controversies that have been wreaking havoc on our economy recently, but I couldn't help myself when a company at the center of one of these stories happened to be in our semiconductor industry.

HPL Technologies, a maker of semiconductor production software, recently ousted its CEO after uncovering huge inconsistencies in its financial reports. A few points are worth noting here. First of all, it's a good sign that a company is taking high-level and dramatic action to put an end to shady practices. Let's hope that other industries with the same problems follow suit. It already seems like there is something like an "ethics-in-accounting" bandwagon forming. Finally!

Second of all, I can almost understand an executive's drive to make the numbers look better. The scrutiny from Wall Street and investors puts extreme pressure on companies to have good-looking financials every quarter. I certainly don't understand all of the accounting subtleties, but to me it seems silly that a company's performance is judged on a few numbers at the end of a particular month. Does a huge order that arrives in the first week of a quarter not "count" until the end of that quarter? It seems like some clever people out there could come up with more indicative numbers. How about three-month rolling averages? Any financial people reading this can probably tell me why that wouldn't work, but I have to believe that there must be a better way to track the financial performance of a company. Any system that makes so many people cheat merits a closer look.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 12)

What Are You Doing Saturday?
News Analysis
San Jose State University continues to enhance its standing as a premier center for education in the field of electronic packaging. The latest step in SJSU's progress on this front is the announcement of a course on electrical performance to be held every Saturday morning from August 24 to December 14.

The course, "Electrical Requirements for Microelectronic Packaging", covers signal integrity issues starting with basic circuit analysis with RC, RL and RLC circuits. Drivers and receivers also will be studied, as well as transmission line issues such as reflections, delays and crosstalk. The simulation will range from system level to transistor level, and measurements with network analyzers and time domain reflectometers (TDRs) also will be covered.

Just think how much better off our industry would be if this course had been widely available 10 or 20 years ago! Nearly everyone in the industry could learn something from this; a basic understanding of these electrical issues is important for nearly every technical position out there.

The instructor will be Dr. Ray Raghuram of Sigrity Inc., and it runs from 9 a.m. to noon every Saturday for most of the remainder of the year. That would be a significant commitment for someone already in the industry, but it could be very helpful in the long run. I've been told that experts in electrical aspects of electronic packaging can write their own ticket, so here's your chance to get on that train.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 9)

One Last Thing About SEMICON West
News Analysis
My last meeting at SEMICON turned out to be one of the best -- even without that appetizer and drink at Il Fornaio across the street. I had the chance to meet with the CEO of Ziptronix, a North Carolina start-up with one of the most intriguing technologies around. They have a wafer bonding process that opens many doors.

Doug Milner, the CEO of Ziptronix, told me about their covalent, wafer-scale bonding process performed at room temperature without adhesives. It works on a wide range of materials, and Milner says that it can be accomplished with equipment and materials that are standard in the industry.

The Ziptronix process has many intriguing applications. For example, one wafer could have holes etched through it, and when bonded to a base wafer, it would create wafer-level cavity packaging. There would be many applications for this -- it allows the economies of wafer level processing without the constraint of wafer fab equipment.

Another potential option is the stacking of wafers with vias for through-wafer interconnects. The "invisible" nature of the bond provides many advantages over standard wafer bonding processes in this application. This could be the closest thing to true 3-D interconnects yet. If you can stack layers of processed and thinned silicon on top of each so that the silicon fully merges with the other pieces in the stack, you could conceivably create arbitrarily many layers of integrated, stacked circuits. This is a huge step over chips stacked with adhesive, or even wafer bonding processes that result in some kind of interface between the layers.

This is definitely a technology to follow.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 7)

New Package / Chip Integration Scheme
News Analysis
One of the slickest things I saw at SEMICON West was a stacked chip technology from Fujitsu that included 25 micron thick chips. The chips are so thin that they were electrically connected with deposited dielectric and interconnect layers, instead of wire bonds or some complicated bumping scheme. In my mind, this is a significant demonstration of how chip manufacturing and packaging can truly converge.

The modules with this technology are processed at the wafer level, with individual thinned chips being placed on top of a wafer full of chips. The thinning is accomplished using Disco equipment, and Dennis Stephenson of Fujitsu said that it does not involve chemicals. The deposited dielectric and interconnect layers are deposited around the structure, creating essentially a chip-scale module.

The dielectric and interconnect layer deposition makes this very much like an extension of the wafer fab. The layers are functionally identical to the top level of interconnect layers on a chip when all of the chips in the stack had been merged into one piece of silicon.

So, this is like a system-in-a-package (SiP) replacing a system-on-a-chip (SOC), and it's being done with wafer-level process by a packaging company. If Fujitsu has some success with this technology, I can see it being pushed to the point where the dielectric and interconnect layers become more and more like those on a chip, so this might be one of the paths to chip/package integration. It seems reasonable that one of the few remaining vertically integrated companies is leading in this. We'll keep watching it!
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 5)

Packaging Squeezed Out?
News Analysis
At the Gartner Dataquest breakfast at SEMICON West, Jim Walker proposed an interesting scenario in which the packaging function gets divided up by wafer fabs and contract manufacturers. With significant developments in packaging being wafer-level processing and system-in-a-package technology, it is conceivable to envision the wafer fabs taking over the WLP, while the contract manufacturers take over SiP. Is packaging as we know it being squeezed out of the equation?

It is intriguing to think about, but I would be very surprised if this sequence of events actually occurred. Although wafer bumping is apparently similar to front-end processing, the wafer fabs don't seem to be jumping on this opportunity. I would think that with all of the idle resources in wafer fabs over the last year or two, someone there would have figured out how to take on that new business if it made any sense. The fact that there is still a debate about where wafer bumping will occur indicates that it's not such an easy fit for the wafer fabs.

On the other end of the squeeze play, even though an SiP is conceptually quite similar to a printed circuit board, the technologies that create these two types of products are quite different. A contract manufacturer would be way out on a limb to take over a chip packaging company. With a small margin business, you don't have a lot of slack where you can take a while to figure out how to function in a new industry.

Who knows though ... maybe ... pick a pair ... that acquisitive Singapore company Flextronics will purchase its struggling Singapore neighbor STATS and overhaul the whole outsourcing industry. It would be a huge story if that happened, and you would see at least two industries scrambling to deal with that development if someone pulled it off successfully.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(August 2)

Packaging Equipment is STILL Different
News Analysis
One of the most interesting conversations I had at SEMICON West was with Dr. Richard Post and Michael Gustafson of NEXX Systems, a relatively new packaging equipment company. Although NEXX's equipment is for wafer-level packaging, they had some interesting thoughts on why even WLP equipment has to be different from front-end tools.

NEXX Systems was founded about a year ago with the purchase of ASTeX Systems Group. The Nimbus product line performs metallization for wafer bumping or backside metallization, and NEXX's goal is to provide processing equipment for all flip chip steps between lithography and inspection.

Post, the CEO of NEXX Systems, and Gustafson, the director of sales and service, started with the obvious point that front-end equipment is simply too expensive -- it has extra features that are not needed in packaging processes. It therefore costs too much to buy and to operate, because the profit margins for packaging companies are smaller. Also, the users can also be overwhelmed by the unnecessary complexity.

A more subtle point involved the progress in the industry. In the front-end, you typically need brand-new types of tools to keep up with the next generation of technology, but that isn't true in WLP processes. Since the geometries are typically well within the capabilities of wafer processing equipment, a new tool is not needed for the next generation of packaging process. This means that fewer tools are sold and there is less R&D money flowing into the company. This is another factor in the cost and profit margin equation.

On the technical side, WLP equipment needs to handle thin wafers, whereas typical wafer processing equipment does not. The thinning process is often a packaging process, so front-end tools never see the thin wafers. For flip chip and WLP processes, though, the wafer is likely to be thinned at some point in the process flow, meaning that the process equipment that follows has to be able to handle thin wafers.

So, these are some things to think about if you intend to just borrow front-end tools to set up your flip chip or WLP process line. The people at NEXX Systems seem to have a pretty good understanding of the issues that apply specifically to packaging equipment.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(July 31)

K&S Speaks at SEMICON West
News Analysis
A highlight for editors at SEMICON West is the annual K&S media lunch, where we get the chance to grill the K&S executives, and to see what the other editors ask of them. CEO Scott Kulicke always usually has interesting things to say, and this year was no exception.

Kulicke started off by saying that he was "at a loss" for what to say about the state of the industry. We all chuckled, knowing that it was unlikely that he would fail to provide some comments. He actually described the state of the industry with terminology I haven't heard yet -- he called it a "time of nuance." Kulicke went on to describe some structural changes in the business that are contributing to the complexities faced by CEOs, analysts and the media. He cited the growth of outsourcing in both the wafer fab and in packaging, and expressed the optimistic view that this would help to smooth out the peaks and valleys of our cycles because the manufacturing supply can be more easily distributed to where it is needed. Let's hope that he's right on that one!

Another interesting fact he raised is that leading edge capability is typically accelerating ahead of roadmaps, while the mainstream or typical capability is decelerating. You can find astounding advances in chip stacking, wafer-level packaging, and other such things, but the majority of packages made are still SOs. Perhaps this will create an increasingly bimodal industry, with the "haves" and "have-nots" diverging, as companies who thrive on the leading edge are different from the companies who can crank out the commodity items. That will be an interesting trend to watch for.

Finally, Kulicke had an interesting comment about people who continue to predict that flip chip will overtake wire bonding before too long. He reminded us NOT to compare developing newer technologies to a STATIC mature technology. That is, wire bonding won't be standing still while flip chip developments continue. The demonstration at the K & S booth of 25-micron wire bonding is a good reminder of that. As Kulicke said, "We continue to surprise ourselves with what we an do with wire bonding." There's a good lesson there!
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(July 29)

A SEMICON West Success Story
News Analysis
It is easy to be a bit cynical about SEMICON, saying that it is has gotten too big and no longer serves the purpose of companies finding new customers and applications for their products. One company I met with there on the last day of the show had exactly that kind of success, though. People at Camtek, a relative newcomer to the packaging industry, told me that they had a great show.

Camtek recently entered the packaging marketplace with inspection equipment for BGA substrates. It has been in the printed circuit board industry for a while, but it has been expanding its scope. The company was created by a PCB company that needed low-cost inspection equipment but couldn't find what it needed. Camtek was born, and it is now bigger than the PCB company that created it.

Roy Porat, the president of Camtek USA, told me at his booth that they found "a lot of real leads" at SEMICON West. These are presumably companies that did not know about Camtek, so those companies had a successful SEMICON as well. On the application front, Porat also told me that they have found uses for their equipment that they did not know about. The example he cited was inspection masks used in wafer bumping, and he believed that he will sell two systems for that application directly because of SEMICON.

It was refreshing to hear these positive stories; perhaps SEMICON is not just the event that you HAVE to be at every year whether it actually helps your sales or not. Perhaps it is still a very productive event for many companies. I can certainly see this being true for small companies. At the very least, it is a place for editors to learn about companies that they wouldn't otherwise encounter. I talked to people from probably a dozen companies that I had never interacted with before, and that alone makes it worthwhile.

On the other end of the spectrum, SEMICON West is still useful to the giants. I asked Scott Kulicke of K & S if the function of SEMICON has changed or diminished over the years for his company. I was expecting some kind of scoop with his thoughts on how the event has become something totally different from what it was, but he said that it is an important event for them and it gets more important every year. A company like K&S is not really looking for new customers there, but it is looking to meet with analysts and demonstrate for the customers what they are all about.

There really is quite a mix of companies at SEMICON West, and it is nice to see that it all still works for a whole range of them.
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(July 26)

Award Winners!
News Analysis
A highlight for us at SEMICON West this year was the presentation of the second annual Advanced Packaging Awards at a special event after the opening day of the show. By all accounts it was a tremendous event, and it was a privilege to be involved in the recognition of some excellent work in the industry.

As an inherently cynical person, I am always a bit skeptical of such award events. It has been great, though, to see that level of interest in our program. We had about 40 percent more entries this year -- and at least a 40 percent bigger bar tab at the party -- and this shows, I believe, the value of what we are doing. There are several ways that such work gets recognized in wafer processing or in the industry as a whole, but there is nothing that focuses just on packaging. We think that we have done a good job of capturing the right segments of the packaging industry without oversimplifying it.

The key to the whole awards program, though, is the unimpeachable set of judges we have to choose to best product in each category. We selected 13 well-known individuals from academia and industry and have assigned them to judge products in three or four of the 14 categories. We also provided fairly specific criteria. The judges and the criteria make it a much more solid process than an "editor's choice" award or something like that. While we had some people disagree with the winners that were selected, we heard no complaints about how they were selected. This, in the long run, makes for a great program.

For those of you who were involved in the program, we would love to get more feedback on the categories, criteria, process ... or anything else. We changed some things after the first year based on input from the participants, and it all worked better because of that. We would like to make it even better for next year, so please tell us how.

This year's winners are posted here on our Web site, and keep your eyes open for announcements about the third annual Advanced Packaging Awards program. SEMICON West 2003 is closer than you think ...
-Jeffrey C. Demmin, Editor-in-Chief
(July 24)

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