Building In Reliability For Packaging And Assembly

Rapidly evolving package technology, especially plastic package technology, combined with shortening silicon process and product development cycles, demands increasingly rapid integration of package technology with silicon technology. On the other hand, package reliability evaluation still requires repeated cycles of fabrication, environmental test, and analysis. This forces parallel, modular, highly accelerated evaluation of the major reliability interactions between silicon and package. We survey the major technology trends, and how these affect siliconlpackage interactions inportant to reliability. Development cycle time may be reduced by replacing 85/85 with HAST and by using assemblyoriented test chips. A key area for future development is the development of models for the prediction of reliability, which will reduce the testing required.