Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1419905
24 PCB007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 tercards. You've got these multiple system- on-package daughtercards that you can sur- face mount and that's your whole system. It's not a big backplane with press fit connectors anymore. And it could be even, because of the signal integrity, a PTFE-like or ceramic-like printed circuit board that takes these fine pitch systems-on-packages that look like BGAs but, in fact, are entire systems inside. Johnson: Joe, we've got all these Dagwood sandwiches of functionality getting stacked up on a plate, if you will. is seems to create an inflection point for the printed circuit board industry. Either you're moving into interpos- ers, which are going to be an ongoing key part of what we do, or you're staying on, with the traditional flat board. To go into interposers, are you talking about a lot of capital equipment and a lot of capital expenditure? Dickson: Yes. And most of the processes are not parallel. You can't produce the same types of products on the same processes. Holden: But you can step halfway into it. Dickson: Yes. And that's what has happened. Holden: at's what ASAP and VeCS are. ASAP and VeCS would allow you to jump into the under- 50 micron without buying a laser drill and just changing your drill bit in your drill or routers. Interestingly, that's what the U.S. military is asking for. e mil- itary wants to move into chiplets and system-on-board micro-pack- ages, but they've got to stay within the ITAR restrictions. Dickson: When I'm talking to peo- ple who are very early in VeCS, I don't use the term VeCS anymore with them. I call it micro slot and blind micro slot technology. at's because it's used not only in PCBs, but in other applications. It's moving up the supply chain from PCB into the interposer into what I'll call the silicon substrate. To be honest with you, I think 10 years from now, you'll see micro slots that are shields for the signals. You'll see them everywhere inside the silicon interposer, and you'll have intermixes of HDI, VeCS type structures, and micro slotting because the parasitics will be a bigger factor. You can create a two-signal structure and then the rest of the slot becomes a shield. It's almost a perfect two-thirds Fara- day cage. So now you've got two different manufac- turing methodologies there if you're trying to do it. But VeCS can do both of those. It can do the high-density thick boards in a conventional process. If you're using VeCS, it's a relatively simple transition. Holden: ere are four or five other advanced technologies that we really don't have in North America—for example, a very inexpen- sive method of excising the bad boards and then putting in a new board in perfect align- ment so that we ship only good images in the subpanels. e boards inside of that subpanel