Amkor's High-Density Manufacturing Process Offers Major Rewards; Costs are Down, Productivity is Up; Strip Testing is Integrated
The company's high-density manufacturing process integrates packaging and test to reduce the cost of materials, labor, cycle time and floor space, and significantly increases the productivity of its equipment and staff, all while maintaining high levels of performance and reliability. The process is applicable to most leadframe-based IC packages, which account for 90 percent of the integrated circuits used today.
There are two key steps that enable this low-cost process. The first is the enlargement and standardization of the copper leadframe strips used in the manufacturing process to 70 mm x 250 mm. By making this and other less visible changes, Amkor is able to assemble and test up to 585 IC packages on a single leadframe strip. The actual IC count per leadframe strip depends on the size of the IC package.
"This high-density process is the packaging equivalent of producing a 300 mm silicon wafer," said Scott Voss, corporate vice president of Amkor's Leadframe Business Group. "We are able to process more packages in less time using less factory space and with less handling. We believe we have created the lowest cost solution for packaging and test in the industry."
The second key step is the integration of electrical test into the assembly process while the IC packages are still held in the strip format. This allows up to 48 packages to be contacted simultaneously and electrically tested in parallel, which reduces indexing and test time per unit.
"Most integrated circuits today are still tested in singulated format, one unit at a time, using a dedicated test handler. With strip testing, a large number of devices are tested in parallel, which lowers the cost of the test, increases throughput and improves quality," said Joe Holt, vice president of Amkor's Test Business Unit.
Amkor Technology invested more than $50 million since 1999 developing and implementing the integrated process. The company produced about five billion leadframe packages in 2000. More than 50 percent of this manufacturing capacity has been converted to the high-density assembly format.
The standardized leadframe size allows a major increase in manufacturing and test flexibility to Amkor's production lines. Automatic molding equipment can be converted from one package size to another in less than an hour, allowing Amkor to respond to rapid changes in customer package mix. Using the standardized strip for test eliminates the need for handler change kits and takes about half the floor space as previous methods.
Since implementation of the high-density process in late 1999, Amkor has seen dramatic results. For example, throughput from trim and form machines has increased by six times previous numbers. Amkor is producing more than 25 package types in high-density format for a customer list that includes nearly all of the world's major IC manufacturers. Amkor has installed high-density capacity at its facilities in Korea and the Philippines and will introduce it soon in its factories in Japan and China.
A PowerPoint presentation on high-density manufacturing and test is available at www.amkor.com\highdensity.
About Amkor Technology: Amkor Technology, Inc. is the world's largest provider of contract microelectronics manufacturing solutions. The company offers semiconductor companies and electronics OEMs a complete set of microelectronic design and manufacturing services, including deep sub-micron wafer fabrication; wafer probe, wafer mapping, characterization and reliability testing; IC packaging design and assembly; multi-chip module design and assembly; and final testing. More information on Amkor is available from the company's SEC filings and on Amkor's web site: www.amkor.com.
CONTACT: Amkor Technology Inc., Chandler
Media:
Ken Jensen, 480/821-2408 ext. 5130
Director Communications
kjens@amkor.com
Investors:
Jeffrey Luth, 610/431-9600
VP Investor Relations
jluth@amkor.com