Embedded Processor Watch

Senior Editor: Tom Halfhill
Contributors to this issue: Peter N. Glaskowsky, Senior Editor; Keith Diefendorff, Editor in Chief

In This Issue:

• FormFactor Springs Into Action
• Tidbits: Hitachi, UMC Jump On 12-Inch Wafers
• Industry Resources: Nab Some Gab at NAB2000
• Transmeta, PC Processors, and IA-64 at March 9 Event

FormFactor Springs Into Action

By Peter N. Glaskowsky

New technology from FormFactor offers several ways to reduce the time and money spent testing and packaging chips, all based on a common idea -- the simple spring. What FormFactor calls MicroSpring contacts begin as gold bond wires, attached to the chip or substrate using a conventional wire-bonding machine. A nickel-alloy plating process turns the wires into springs.

The first commercial application of the new contacts is in probe heads for wafer-test systems. FormFactor's probe heads improve on the electrical characteristics of the probes they replace and offer improved parallelism to reduce test time and cost. FormFactor says there is no known limit to the number of test cycles that can be performed using a single probe head or on a single device. One customer reports over two million touchdown cycles (so far) from a single probe head, with no maintenance or cleaning. FormFactor says it has over 20 DRAM makers using its probe heads today, though only IBM and Infineon have gone public with their use of the new heads.

The springs may also be used in sockets for ball-grid-array and leadless-grid-array packages. These sockets are smaller and sturdier than competing products. In another application, the springs may be attached directly to a wafer, enabling full-speed testing and eliminating the need for further packaging steps. FormFactor expects this technology to be adopted first by high-performance DRAM makers; for these companies it may save as much as $1 per chip. FormFactor is competing with many well-established technologies, some of which offer advantages over the spring-contact approach, but FormFactor's superior cost structure seems likely to earn it a large share of this important market. (The full version of this article -- including five photographs -- is available online to Microprocessor Report subscribers with a password: http://www.MDRonline.com/mpr/h/2000/0221/140801.html).

Tidbits: Hitachi, UMC Jump On 12-Inch Wafers

Hitachi and UMC have announced a $600-million joint-venture to build a new 7,000 wafer per week 300-mm wafer fab. The new facility will begin production in the first half of 2001, well ahead of Intel's planned 300-mm facility.--Keith Diefendorff

Industry Resources: Nab Some Gab at NAB2000

If you're interested in digital TV, interactive TV, digital-video production, satellite communications, Internet commerce, or giant garish hotels, the NAB2000 conference in Las Vegas is the place to be. Sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters, NAB2000 will be held April 8-13 (with exhibits on April 10-13) at the Las Vegas Convention Center and Sands Expo Center.

Among the sessions scheduled are "The Convergence of Entertainment and Technology: A View From the Year 2010" and "Interactive Television: The Evolving Landscape." Registration fees range from $150 to $925. For more information, call 888.740.4622 or 301.682.7962, or go to http://www.nab.org/conventions/.

Transmeta, PC Processors, and IA-64 at March 9 Event

Microprocessor Report's next quarterly seminars and dinner meeting, to be held March 9 at the Westin Santa Clara, will feature seminars on PC processors and IA-64, as well as a dinner presentation by Transmeta CEO Dave Ditzel.

This dinner presentation provides a rare opportunity to hear directly from Transmeta's founder about the design tradeoffs in the Crusoe design, the innovations in the VLIW architecture and code morphing software, and how it may affect the future of the microprocessor industry.

Two seminars are offered concurrently. "Inside Today's PC Processors: Architectures, Microarchitectures, and Performance" will be presented by Keith Diefendorff, editor in chief of Microprocessor Report. This seminar gives an inside look at the microarchitectures, bus and cache architectures, and performance of the most important PC processors. This is our most technical seminar and is designed for attendees who want to understand the internal design differences in today's PC processors.

The second seminar, "Intel's Itanium and IA-64: Dawn of a New Era?," will be presented by Linley Gwennap, founder and principal analyst of The Linley Group. This seminar starts with the philosophy behind IA-64's EPIC technology and then moves into a description and evaluation of the complete instruction set. Linley explains the Itanium design, compares it with its RISC and x86 rivals, and projects the performance and pricing of Itanium -- as well as future IA-64 processors such as McKinley, Madison, and Deerfield.

Registration is $99 for the dinner presentation only, $795 for a seminar only, or $845 for one seminar and the dinner meeting. Register today on the Web at http://www.MDRonline.com/sve or call 800.527.0288. Advance registration is required.