Why Microelectronics and Packaging? Wireless Applications
IMAPS is powerful in promoting Research and Development through its Student Chapters and specific research related initiatives. IMAPS has its Marketing activity (MMRC). But it is the production of electronics appliances that brings concrete values to the public. Every improvement in, for example, wireless applications benefits not only the manufacturer but the general public and of course the widespread worldwide communication we take for granted would not be possible without great inventions and thousands of small improvements in microelectronics and packaging.
For decades the emphasis in electronics has been in semiconductor manufacture and design, but we have recently come to the point where modern semiconductor fabs are so expensive and so sensitive to external disturbances like dirt that not even giants like IBM can afford to develop new factories alone.
Simultaneously has System on Chip come to a stage where the chip complexity is close to the limit of capability of design and simulation tools. Being one-chip solutions these monsters are also difficult or impossible to test for all potential uses and situations.
System in Package is more realistic accepting the fact we need to use separate building blocks that can be physically separately tested before assembly and allowing system level active trimming of functions to by-pass variance in semiconductor performance.
System in Package is a bit closer to the reality, where we do have two-way user interfaces, power control and network connections. These will of course never be realized on a single chip.
Back to IMAPS. If the general public benefits from end-products should we only then focus our society activities on Applications? Why not! IMAPS is unique in offering forums where people meet like friends and give out some knowledge more or less free, knowing that when we all do this we get a hundred-fold back. The rules of market economy are within IMAPS perhaps a tool to keep costs down but if we measure within our activities only financial performance we lose control of the majority of added values and earnings.
As Advancing Microelectronics is supplied to European and North America IMAPS members, we have here in this issue two articles on wireless applications, written by members from two big European companies, EADS and Nokia Mobile Phones. These are modifications of presentations recently held in the IMAPS Nordic 30th Anniversary Conference in Oslo. This Scandinavian chapter is very busy in telecom applications, being the home of big players Ericsson and Nokia, both outsourcing a lot of modules and assembly. You may see more about that conference elsewhere but now back to the two articles and companies.
EADS, European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, has gone through a number of changes in recent years, both organizationally (still last year the main part was DaimlerChrysler Aerospace) but also product wise, where commercial products now is dominating. In 2000, EADS generated pro forma sales of EUR 24.2 billion, 80 percent in civil activities and 20 percent in the military sector. EADS employs more than 100,000 people at over 70 sites in France (37%), Germany (35%), Great Britain and Spain.
Read more about EADS at http://www.eads.net/eads/en/
Martin Oppermann is Head of New Module Technologies and a long time expert on packaging and interconnect in EADS Deutschland GmbH, Systems & Defense Electronics, MicroWave Factory, R&D. He was voted the best speaker in last year’s IMAPS Nordic conference and he is back again! Microwave applications are really hard to realize in a functional way but Martin has his own ideas on modularity and dense packaging. In microwaves the problem is not to get bare die, the problem is to get encapsulated die because they lose so much in performance if the package is not optimized for the specific function.
Nokia is more well known, the innovative telecommunication leader in mobile and fixed terminals and networks. Net sales in year 2000 were EUR 30.4 billion with a total of 56,000 employees. Nokia is one of the leaders in 3rd generation telephony and the world’s first 3G WCDMA voice call on commercial 3GPP system was made in August, 2001.
Learn more on Nokia at http://www.nokia.com/main.html
Petri Savolainen is an expert on packaging and interconnect with Nokia Mobile Phones, the cell phone division. Manufacturing is so essential that NMP has limited its outsourcing and has managed to cut production costs multiple times in recent years and is still doing great profit. Component technology and sourcing are very essential elements and so are the yield and quality aspects.
Happy readings!
Paul Collander
IMAPS Nordic President
Nokia Networks, Finland
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