Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1456062
24 SMT007 MAGAZINE I MARCH 2022 ere are some people who have assembly capability here for some of their planned activ- ities. For example, Intel says that it is putting its Foveros—basically a 3D chiplet stack with microbumps that goes into a package—assem- bly in the U.S. e substrates would still be made overseas. Even if they put that assembly facility in New Mexico, your substrate would still not be made here. Now, it's a global supply chain and you can make use of the global supply chain if you want to. But if your goal is to have everything done in the U.S., then the plan does not currently achieve the goal. Johnson: at really does set up the issue, doesn't it? You can make all the chips you want, but if you can't get them packaged, then what? Vardaman: en what's the point? What's the point of spending $52 billion on silicon foundry capability if you're just going to send it back over to Asia for packaging and assembly? You can capture this in a quick couple of sentences: First, "We're going to use our global supply chain." at's fine. But you need to recognize that you are not bringing everything back to the U.S. It's much more expensive to do things here. For example, manufacturing is done here for medical and defense purposes, but the costs are much higher. Assembly and other manufacturing in the U.S. are also more expensive, which is why companies moved overseas in the first place. In the beginning, we manufactured in the United States. Apple had a huge board assem- bly plant in Fremont, California, that received visitors from all over the world. I'm here in Austin, Texas, and we have board level assem- bly for a lot of the Cisco routers. When peo- ple talk about electronics manufacturing you need to understand every aspect of the supply chain. Many people read the report and concluded, "I guess we're going to put in substrate capabil- ities." Not quite, that's very expensive. If you're targeting this high-performance market, the feature sizes will require you to produce sub- strate in a cleanroom. Intel says that putting in a state-of-the-art substrate facility using the build-up film would require about a bil- lion dollars in investment. e equipment sup- pliers are not in the U.S., typically. e equip- ment lead-times are two years. Even if you start today, you wouldn't have that high perfor- mance buildup film capability until 2024. It's fine to say, "We're just going to use the global supply chain." But everybody needs to be on the same page and understand what we're doing here. Johnson: On Capitol Hill, one of the motiva- tions for the legislation is the fact that we don't have all the manufacturing capability on hand to support our own military, as well as create a more diverse supply chain. How does this play together? Vardaman: e problem with defense is it's a small volume market. It's very hard to justify spending the amount of money it would take to put in the capability to serve that market at such a small volume. It doesn't make business sense. Some companies have put in their own bumping. e substrate, though, is a real prob- lem because there's a substrate shortage. Why is that? ese more complex devices like the server CPUs and network switches What's the point of spending $52 billion on silicon foundry capability if you're just going to send it back over to Asia for packaging and assembly?