Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1490123
8 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2023 Nolan's Notes by Nolan Johnson, I-CONNECT007 An Evolution is month, PCB007 Magazine looks at the evolution of advanced packaging from the fabricator's perspective. is is, as you're aware, a global topic. Asia harbors nearly all the manufacturing capabilities for the packag- ing and interposer substrates required for the latest packaging technologies. North Amer- ica and Europe, buoyed by their respective chip technologies legislation, are working to bring packaging capability back to their home shores. How this plays out remains to be seen. Th i s i s s u c h a n important topic that our January issue of SMT007 Magazine focused on it from an assembler's per- spective. In my col- umn for that issue, I cited mainstream media coverage of Pr e s i d e n t Bi d e n's m i d - D e c e m b e r visit to the Arizona TSMC semiconduc- tor foundry. In fur- ther research, I gained a new perspective from Chinese and Taiwanese voices covering the same visit. An online piece published by Fortune.com, for example, reported, "TSMC is now build- ing plants in Arizona and Japan amid grow- ing concerns from customers and major gov- ernments that the world's chip production is too centralized in Taiwan." 1 e pressure for this move off the island is attributed primar- ily to TSMC's customers. It's a true statement. Perhaps not the only true statement, but true, nonetheless. Now, there are some situations wherein a glob- ally centralized production chain makes sense. In physics class, that would be a lesson starting with, "In a frictionless environment," and in economics, I suppose the corollar y would be, "In an economy without political bor- ders." For example, the southern portion of the African conti- nent is heavy with dia- mond deposits, so it makes sense to refine a rare mineral close to that mineral deposit— cut and create fin- ished diamonds close t h e s o u r c e . T h a t 's efficient. Yet that isn't how it's done. e world's fin- est diamond cutters don't live near the mines. e skilled staff who know how to turn the raw material into a high value finished product may not be willing to work next to the raw materi- al's source. ey may prefer to be closer to one