The concept of the flip chip is to mount chips unpackaged straight onto the board on their backs, with the connecting wires coming off the top, so that the chip can be glued securely to the board without creating wiring difficulties. Now a Low Cost Flip Chip Consortium has been formed in Santa Clara, California to perfect and standardise the concept, and it has been awarded $9.8m grant by the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency out of a total commitment of $21.1m, to advance the technology and domestic production infrastructure for flip chip assemblies of integrated circuits. The industry side was led by National Semiconductor Corp, and other members of the Consortium are Aptos Corp, Delco Electronics Corp, Jabil Circuits Inc, Hughes Missile Systems Co, Litronic Industries Inc, Sheldahl Inc and SanDisk Corp. NatSemi says the initiative springs from growing recognition that both military and commercial electronic products are evolving toward lower cost, smaller form factor, lower weight and higher performance, and that these can best be realised at the chip level by eliminating the package and taking the connecting wires off from all over the surface of the chip rather than just around the edges, especially since the more complex chips become, the more external connections are needed to different parts of the chip. The partners look to meet all their objectives within two years.
