Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/898297
14 The PCB Magazine • November 2017 cellular phones and camcorders and for fine- pitch IC packages. It just happens that Japan, Korea and Taiwan make a lot of these products and we don't. In fact, at the Electronics Circuits World Conference 14, companies like Samsung have been working on new lower-cost laser HDI technologies using thermoset resins. This eliminates the need for lamination presses and lowers the material costs in the production of microvias. Lately, my time has been monopolized by OEMs asking about the most cost-effective way to use the new 0.5 mm BGAs. Many of these are digital signal processors (DSP) and custom ASICs in the 457 to 1384 I/Os range. These are being produced in the millions now and are go- ing into all sorts of sophisticated servers, net- working and telecom products. These industri- al products will now form the third platform for HDI. These products also make up a majority of the high value-added electronics produced in North America. The reason for the increase in fine-pitch BGA activity can be seen in Figure 2. In 2016, BGAs are approaching the costs of quad flat packag- es and complex (high pin count) packages now cost less than one cent per pin. With package prices like that, all OEMs are considering how to use them in their new products. I'm not going to talk about making micro- vias; that's the easy part (but expensive). There are now laser drilling job shops that you can subcontract to. No, the real issues are metallization, registration and plating. When dealing with small blind vias, get- ting a reliable, completed blind connection takes more than just wetting a small hole. The one issue they don't talk a lot about is the assistance OEMs need when first dealing with microvias. Their first ques- tions are, "How small can you make this with microvias?" and "How much will it cost?" The questions are obvious, but the answers aren't. For the first time, we know more about build - ing the HDI product than we do about designing it or pricing it. Yet, this is where the OEMs are going to start asking their questions. Be prepared! One way to help the OEM is to provide him with the new HDI Handbook (Volume II) scheduled for publica - tion in December 2017 by I-Connect007 [3] . It will also be available at IPC APEX EXPO in San Diego. This free and downloadable eB- ook will have nearly 19 chapters to give any OEM or fabricator a thorough understanding of HDI, including how HDI can make assem- blies smaller and/or thinner. These issues will be important as you decide your future; with or without HDI. Defining Density Needs I would like to introduce all of you to some of the measures of performance or met- rics for the HDI Value Delivery Chain (VDC). Figure 3 is what I call a Packaging Technolo- gy Map. The Packaging Technology Map was first displayed by Toshiba in January of 1991 in the paper "New Polymeric Multilayer and Packaging" at the Printed Circuit World Con- ference V in Glasgow, Scotland [4] . So, I didn't invent this chart, but I have been unsuccess- ful since 1991 in finding the person or per- sons who did. No one in Japan seems to know about this chart! In the chart, I saw for the first time the in- terrelationship between component packag- 35 YEARS OF HDI FABRICATION PROCESSES AND OBSTACLES FOR IMPLEMENTATION Figure 2: Assembled array packaging prices from Prismark survey [2] .