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Chapter 6
ORGANIZATIONAL, FUNDING, AND POLICY ISSUES
The foregoing chapters presented technical aspects of the subject of
materials and high-density electronic packaging. The topic was presented from
the points of view of systems considerations, existing approaches, and the
materials themselves. In this chapter, the business, organizational, policy,
and political aspects of the subject are examined. The committee recognizes
that some of the discussions below go beyond technical matters, which are the
focus of the report. Nevertheless, these discussions are pertinent to giving
readers an understanding of the overall industry situation and provide a basis
for some of the recommendations developed by the committee. This inevitably
leads to comparisons of the U.S. versus the Japanese approach, involving
issues of competitiveness, research funding, vertical integration, and the
range of business vision in the United States. The 1980s could well be
labeled the decade of "electronics consortia," and this mode of organization
must also be considered.
One must acknowledge that the loss of the U.S. technological edge in
electronics can be related to the U.S. electronic industry's concentration on
IC chip design and overall systems aspects. By contrast, the Japanese
industry moved into the volume commercial marketplace, with particular focus
on the packaging area, that gave them a major advantage in the technological
advancement of their industry. The U.S. industry placed emphasis on the high-
end, low-volume technologies, hoping for a ~ trickledown" effect. This was
contrary to the Japanese approach of getting into the low-end, high-volume
products, that were then upgraded to the high-end technologies where their new
dominance is appearing today . In addition, large Japanese electronics
companies are fully integrated from raw materials through the consumer
product, giving them full control of all fabrication steps. U.S. companies
have found it difficult to assimilate this type of integration into their
manufacturing schemes and philosophy.
INTEGRATION
The U.S. electronics industry is fragmented laterally. Manufacturers do
not share component, system, and process design information beyond those
necessary to establish needed industry standards. This leads to nationally
expensive redundance, at least some of which could be eliminated without
exposing the public to the negative aspects that can result from monopoly
control. U.S. corporations are, however, reluctant to engage in activities
that could bring antitrust enforcement actions. There is some progress in
cooperation, but caution is evident.
95
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The U.S. electronics busir~ess is also fragmented vertically, arid it is
the lower levels of the supply and manufacture ng chain that are most closely
involved with the materials aspects of packaging and interconnection. The
following sequence illustrates the problem for organic maters als employed in
chip encapsulation. A compounder (i . e ., an independent company) purchases
epoxy resins, accelerators, curing agents, silica fillers, antimony oxide (a
flame retardant), and other components from various chemical suppliers, quite
possibly ~ different supplier for each compound. The chemicals are supplied
according to specifications, but they are normally not "pure" by electronics
standards. Epoxy resins are usually somewhat ambiguous in chemical structure,
and the silica powder varies in particle size distribution and possibly in
surface characteristics. The compounder normally is not sophisticated in the
characterization of incoming supplies. The materials are mixed (compounded)
by a proprietary process that is controlled to some degree, but not precisely.
Solid preforms, which are about 2 in. in diameter and 16 in. thick, are
made and sent to the encapsulation facility, a different company, commonly in
the Far East. The preform is preheated, placed in a plunger cylinder , heated
further, and forced through runners of a transfer mold and into cavities
containing individual chips (perhaps as many of 300 at a shot). In this
process, the epoxy precursors react to form a highly crosslinked polymer,
release heat, and undergo first a decrease in viscosity, then an increase to
form a rigid solid case surrounding the chip.
This encapsulated device is tested (under considerable stress) and
shipped to an assembly factory, where it is put on a circuit board and
soldered in place. (It should be noted that the circuit board, organic or
ceramic, also has arrived at the assembly factory by a similarly complex chain
of suppliers and processors.) Following more testing, the board is plugged
into the system by the f inal sys tem manufac surer .
Clearly, the system works remarkably well, and the existence of complex
electronic apparatus attests to the dedication and expertise of the various
contributors along the way. There is, however, very little information flow
along ache chain because the materials and processes employed are secret and
proprietary at each fabrication stage. This places great importance on the
consistency for each process . Men problems ari se, it can be difficult to
identify the source. A molder can be expected to find fault with the epoxy
compound, even when it is known that the molding process is not quite right.
And so it goes at each stage . As packaging and interconnection become more
and more demanding (and fine lines, large lead counts, and higher power
dissipation will test the technology), process maintenance, quality assurance,
and production schedules will be increasingly difficult to guarantee.
The chain of transfer from one company to another creates even greater
challenges for research and development. The U.S. companies involved are
traditionally secret-process-based, and this mentality runs deep. An
organization does not transmit technical details to its customers, and,
although there are signs of movement to a more cooperative posture, reform
requires changes in this ingrained behavior.
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The alternative is ache entry of a vertically integrated U.S. company
that could carry through several or all of the steps in material production,
compounding, and molding. No serious U.S. effort is known in this direction
for chip encapsulation, printed circuit board manufacture, or ceramic detail
production.
SYSTEMS VERSUS MATERIALS APPROACHES
A central technical issue is the balance of package and interconnect
materials considerations, building-block approaches, system-architectural
approaches, and system-organization approaches ~ Past packaging approaches
have not been materials-focused but have stressed configuration of known
materials. Past system-performance approaches have focused on parallelism and
enhanced building blocks having tighter physical configurations. These
approaches might have come to a point of diminishing returns, but progress
continues to be made, and rate of improvement does not appear to be tapering
off. Even so, it is clear that materials contributions to the enhancement of
system capability will be centrally important in the next decade and should be
addressed.
l .
The political issues being addressed in this report are probably the
more important ones because these issues appear to limit progress in resolving
today's technical problems. A few of these political issues are scrutinized
here.
First, the relationship between the materials supplier community and the
user community is universally unsatisfactory. The suppliers are perceived as
secretive, concerned with establishing a proprietary position for their
financial advantage, unwilling to invest for a long-term goal, and unwilling
to speculate beyond their current status. The users, in turn, are perceived
as indifferent to physical limitations, unwilling to share their evaluation
results with their suppliers, playing off suppliers against each other, and
always blaming the materials when things do not work out as they would like.
The problem is that the suppliers and the users are not of a common technical
culture and are separated by marketing and purchasing communities that are not
concerned with technical progress. There is need for a technical community in
which the users and suppliers can engage in technical interchange without
being cornered by the interplay of financial, accounting, and business ~
activities. This is difficult to accomplish in this corporate-based culture.
A second political issue that will have a major impact on the packaging
and interconnect approach is that of funding and control. Funding is one of
the levers with which it is possible to move the suppliers and the users of
packaging and interconnect materials to work with each other. It can be noted
that government funding seems to perform this unifying role especially well,
s ince all the participants involved sense that they are benefiting from
funding that does not come from their own pockets. Government funding seems
to flow naturally from the Department of Defense, but for packaging, the most
serious problem appears to be the divergence of military packaging from the
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packaging approaches of mainstream developers of high-performance systems.
is easy to cite some specifics:
· Military systems insist on the use of hermetic packages, but most
high-performance systems in the commercial world use plastic-packaged (or
unpackaged) parts.
· Military system technology tends to lag a generation behind that
used in the commercial world because military systems development and
deployment have at least a 10-year time frame, whereas commercial systems must
get to market 3 years after the start of development, or they will have missed
the market and another supplier will have gotten there first.
· Military systems are tied to conservative approaches, such as
hermeticity, no organics inside the package, and the value of old technologies
in the face of rapid progress in the commercial world.
Nevertheless, the military services have funding, and their willingness to
fund (if not to use) advanced technology makes them a partner to be sought.
The most serious issue is the choice of vehicle for the materials
development activities. To develop materials in isolation from a system
application is a futile exercise even under the best of circumstances' but,
when the materials are required to be structurally and electrically stable and
to be subj ect to a variety of environments and applications, it is impossible
deco imagine a successful outcome. The materials user should choose a
challenging system application and pick a system supplier (or suppliers ~ that
will support them In applying their materials expertise to the system in a
real-time (scheduled) program.
PROGRAMS AND CONSORTIA
During the 1980s, several U.S. cooperative technical ventures have been
implemented. These programs came in response to a number of Japanese efforts
that began in the mid-1970s that are perceived to be extremely successful.
Competing efforts began to appear in Europe in 1983. Some are governmental in
origin, and others were organized privately. In addition, some are solely
funding operations, whereas others have established facilities for technology
development and demonstration. Some of the programs have a healthy component
of packaging technology, but none is focused on packaging and interconnection.
In the following paragraphs, several programs are described briefly in the
context of this report.
Very-High-Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC)
The VHSIC program was intiated by the Department of Defense in 1980 as
the program, Advanced Technology Weapons Systems. Funding of more than a
billion dollars has been committed to cover 10 years' work. An aggressive
processor design program was developed, and contract work was undertaken by
Honeywell, Hughes, IBM, TI, TRW, and Westinghouse. Packaging and PWBs are a
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part of the program, and significant advances have been made in chip carrier,
pin grid array, and TAB technologies.
Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Integrated Circuits (MIMIC)
The MIMIC program was initiated by DOD in 1987 as a spin-off of VHSIC.
The purpose is to develop high-speed transmitters and receivers for phased-
array radar. Initial funding of $11 million was made available, and work was
undertaken by a large number of firms.
Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC)
The SRC was formed in 1982 to support generic research in universities
on behalf of industrial members (initially AT&T, DEC, DuPont, HP, and IBM).
Research results and trained engineers are said to be the main products. The
funding level was about $20 million in 1986. Government agencies also have
begun to provide funds under the SRC program. Packaging research has received
considerable emphasis, giving rise to broadly-based thermal management and
reliability results.
Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC)
The MCC began operations in 1983 with funding by share owners AND,
Control Data, DEC, Harris, Honeywell, Motorola, National, NCR, RCA, and Sperry
(and later Allied, Mostek, Martin Marietta, Rockwell, and BMC). Over 300
employees conduct R&D at the MCC facility in Austin, Texas, and to date over
$200 million has been supplied by the member firms. The purpose of MCC is to
provide techniques of manufacture and design, and packaging is one of the
specifically identified areas of focus. Significant programs in TAB
technology are already well established.
S EMATECH
Sematech is a consortium of electronics companies established in 1987 to
help U.S. chip makers by developing advanced microelectronic manufacturing
technology and equipment. It receives DOD funding in the amount of 6100
million, and industrial members will supply funding at the same level. The
physical facility is located in Austin, Texas; corporate members include AMD,
AT&T, DEC, Harris, HP, Intel, IBM, LSI Logic, Micron, Motorola, National, NCR,
Rockwell, and TI.
Other Considerations
Thus, it seems that packaging is an important consideration in the
various consortia formed recently to support advanced electronics system
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manufacture. None of the consortia or programs are specifically directed at
materials problems or packaging as the primary issue. Therefore, it may be
reasonable to work wi thin the structure of the existing consortia and programs
to enhance an integrated approach to package and interconnect design in which
materials properties and processing are given emphasis at every step. As
circuit performance limitations become more and more package-based, the j oint
programs will gravitate to des ign factors at the package level, and the
materials and combinations of materials involved will be central issues.
An alternative approach could lie in the establishment of a U.S.
consortium for pre-competitive research and development for packaging and
interconnection materials and processes. Both industry and government funding
would be desirable, and the organization could contribute positively to
cooperation between materials users and materials suppliers. The materials
focus would permit emphasis on synthesis, compounding, processing,
reliability, and characterization. Many of the facilities needed are
expensive and must be operated by knowledgeable people, and the existence of a
materials-oriented consortium would provide economies of scale through pooling
of such a capability. Coupling to systems-oriented organizations would be
essential. The Table in the Executive Summary illustrates features of the
consortium, Sepatech as composed with Sematech (The Air Force is now
attempting to implement such a cooperative.)
It may be perceived that consortia that are concerned with research and
applied research aspects of package design can involve cooperation among
industrial companies yet have little effect on their ability to compete at the
completed system level. It will be important for U.S. companies to learn this
lesson in the near future, and programs along these lines deserve
encouragement. Somehow, corporate members should receive.incentives in some
form to place first-class people into the consortia activity.
THE UNIVERSITY ROLE
U.S. universities are outstanding in all areas of engineering and
science and, as such, should offer a solid foundation for the electronics
industry, including materials issues in packaging and interconnection. At
present, gratifying efforts are being made to improve the coupling of academia
with industry. However, cultural mismatches impede progress. There is too
little understanding of needs and directions by the university community, and
industry has been ineffective in establishing lines of (two-way)
communication. The consortia can help, but they should realize, as part of
their founding concepts, that university interactions require both money and
the time commitment of bright, well-connected people.
Engineering departments are the sensible academic points of contact, and
benefits accrue to both parties. The high proportion of foreign students in
U.S. engineering departments is a concern, particularly for DOD-funded work.
There is often a degree of insularity among university departments and
colleges, a factor that can make it difficult for science departments to
interact effectively with the electronics industry. Competition for funding
and for good students is a source of difficulty. Industrial firms, consortia,
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and funding agencies will be well-advised to require reasonable levels of
interdisciplinary activity. Again, materials and systems factors cannot be
separated. Materials compatibility also is critical, and isolated studies and
development of individual materials is unlikely to be as valuable as work in
context.
The Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) program of the National Science
Foundation could provide an innovative focus for materials aspects of
packaging. Industrial participation and interdisciplinary organization are
strongly encouraged in the ERC format. Substantial ongoing funding and
program accountability are necessary features of the established ERC format.
The ERCs bring together many elements that are perceived as essential in a
successful pursuit of materials for high-density electronics packaging.
Not to be neglected are the contributions made by the private "think-
tank" types of laboratories and institutions such as, Battelle, SRI, A.D.
Little, David Sarnoff Research Center, SWRI, and MITRE Corporation. These
organizations are funded by government, industry, and foundations to examine
various technical and policy questions. They are capable of addressing
specific questions that are often too complex or too sensitive for others to
undertake without apparent major conflicts of interest.
Universities also are uniquely qualified to integrate the knowledge base
for areas such as packaging. Packaging and interconnection involve complex
engineering judgments involving diverse properties and structures. Modeling,
scaling theory, and physical design fundamentals require a breadth of
knowledge and facility for codification that are well - adapted to academic
engineering programs . Again, work in isolation is less effective .
Universities also have the culture and freedom to pursue breakthrough
technologies, as opposed to incrementally improving the materials that are
normally employed. Current materials have real limitations, and ultimate
limitations of materials properties in systems terms are now within sight.
The payback is becoming increasingly important for adoption of materials with
lower dielectric constant, higher electrical conductivity, higher thermal
conductivity, and controlled coefficient of thermal expansion. University
work can probe and bring understanding to the physical limitations in these
characteristics, beginning with long- range programs that address materials
structures that are far removed from materials of commerce.
The U.S. electronics industry has many examples of new corporations
started by academic staff members that are based on research from university
laboratories. It is, perhaps, surprising that more of these firms are not
based on materials developments. As materials limits are approached, the
opportunities for commercial applications of exotic materials will
proliferate. Smaller companies can more easily commercialize materials
measured in grams rather than tons, but success will depend on the technical
depth and patent protection. University laboratories should be highly
successful in this general area, and the near future is ripe for materials
development in the electronics packaging business.
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To fully enjoy the fruits of the U.S. academic community, it is
important for U.S. industry to improve the industrial-academic interface.
Industrial cultures tend to be secretive to an excessive degree, which is
harmful to the corporations that the secrecy is designed to protect.
Universities are perceived as receptive to industrial collaboration only as a
means to funding. It is a fact that engineers and scientists in industry have
difficulty in being received as equals in technical discussions with
academics. These cultural characteristics are antagonistic to cooperative
working relationships, and they can be overcome by participation in projects
in which goals and rewards are shared.
Thus, universities represent a U.S. resource that can provide
considerable leverage in electronic packaging. Generally, the universities
will be most effective in connection with the knowledge base and knowledge
integration, but, where revolutionary advances occur, academic research can be
translated quickly into commercial products and processes. The materials area
today is attractive in this connection. [Note: Recently, the Air Force
(Wright R&D Centre) initiated action on a cooperative program to determine the
areas in which industry would be willing to participate. Progress has been
made in stimulating interest by all parties to work together on packaging
problems for mutual benefit, e.g., the MCC-Lehigh University cooperative under
the guidance of R.J. Jaccodine of Lehigh University.]
EMIGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY
In the past three decades, the United States has moved from a world
position of technical dominance to a position of insecurity and reliance on
foreign supply of high-technology goods. The emergence of a world market has
eliminated any protection based on geography. Manufacture of many items has
moved abroad for reasons of wages, cost of supplies, and entry into foreign
markets. Engineering and design are following manufacturing. A major cause
is that the U.S. workforce has declined both in education and motivation. All
of these factors bear strongly on the future of the U.S. standard of living.
In electronics, the area of consumer products has been taken over mainly
by Japan. The Japanese have also become pre-eminent in memory production and
in building machines for integrated circuit manufacture. Japan is now
mounting a strong effort in the computer area. On the materials side, the
Japanese are self-sufficient, but the United States is not. In both ceramics
and organic polymers, Japanese firms lead the United States in many important
segments. Specifically, electronic ceramic materials come principally from
Japan, and now the suppliers have integrated forward into the manufacture of
encapsulation modules (e.g., chip carriers and pin grid arrays). They also
are dominant in the supply of transfer molding epoxy compounds. In printed
wiring boards, multichip modules, chip-board assembly technology, and other
interconnection media, both countries appear to be equally capable.
The United States will do well to study and understand the causes of its
loss in relative position in these critical technologies. Studies have been
conducted for other technology sectors, but the materials chain may have
unique features because of its high degree of vertical and horizontal
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fragmentation. Loss of technical capability must be arrested, and domestic
production in critical areas must be restored. The present trends leave the
United States vulnerable both militarily and financially. For materials, U.S.
industries, universities, and technologies are fundamentally strong, but there
are signs of weakness. For example, too few young people are attracted to
ceramic and polymer science and engineering. Without wishing for government
management of business, it would be desirable that encouragement be offered in
critical technologies.
PRIVATE FUNDING AND PUBLI C FUNDING
The programs and consortia summarized in this chapter provide
interesting examples of funding options, but many forms can be made to work.
There are, however, forces at work in the United States today that work
against effective long-range approaches to maintaining a high-technology
industry. Funding of research and development must be kept reasonably stable.
Good programs require a hierarchy of knowledge that takes years to acquire. A
field can attract excellent people only if satisfying careers can be predicted
with confidence. An infrastructure of communication links supports funding,
development efforts, and the manufacturing and marketing that feed back the
ongoing supporting funds. Once lost, these links are difficult to rebuild.
Private funding in engineering and research is less robust. Many
factors characteristic of U.S. business patterns today inhibit the long-range
view necessary for good engineering and research. The mergers, takeovers, and
resulting restructurings of major corporations are harmful to the creation of
wealth and the maintenance of long-term satisfying employment within the
United States. As corporations become more thinly capitalized, they become
more susceptible to inevitable fluctuations in business. This leads to
episodic retrenchment in long-range, high-technology segments of the business,
an effect that is deadly.
Government agency funding may become unstable as a consequence of the
deficit, negative balance of payments, and other factors that lead to calls
for cuts in the budget. The Department of Defense, however, has been
remarkably consistent in its support of engineering and science, and optimism
in this regard extends into the Bush administration. So, too, the Department
of Energy's National Laboratory system has been well supported, and the
National Science Foundation budget permits funding of a number of important
technical initiatives. Thus, federal funding appears to be in reasonably good
shape in spite of the negative factors mentioned.
The Department of Defense has special reasons to support work on
materials for high-density electronic packaging and interconnection. Military
circuitry traditionally has been based on IC chips that are contained in
hermetic packages. As intrachip communication becomes ever more important as
a limitation on circuit performance, the single-chip hermetic packaging
requirement becomes increasingly burdensome. Therefore, it is important that
new approaches be found that will achieve the most advanced systems
requirements without losing the long-term reliability presumed to accrue from
hermetic packaging. New materials will play an important role in resolving
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this problem, and enhanced DOD funding can be expected for materials
applications in packaging and interconnection.
recommended
Mixed government and private
funding is a healthy approach and is
_ _ _. Stability can be improved through funding diversity, and
national policy needs can be injected into programs at a point of leverage.
should be riven to programs directed to the nation's
Somehow, preference should be given to programs directed to the nation's
fiscal welfare. For all the right reasons, programs in materials engineering
and science, in the context of advanced electronic packaging and
interconnection, deserve continuing substantial support and attention.
CONCLUS ION
The United States has lost control of major segments of the supply chain
of materials that are essential to electronic packaging and interconnection.
Furthermore, the organizational culture and legal framework of U. S . industry
is such that it is likely that further erosion of the U.S. world position will
occur . Thus, the supremacy ~ or
even the viability) of the United States in
computers, telecommunications equipment, aircraft, defense hardware,
automobiles, space technology, and other key areas could well go the way of
the consumer electronics business. New mechanisms and policies must be
developed to support and stimulate domestic materials suppliers to work
closely with electronics systems houses in long-range programs aimed at
recapturing world leadership.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
electronics industry
