I’ve had an epiphany regarding fan-out wafer level packaging (FOWLP).
Epiphany: “A usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something.”
In FvT’s piece “Spotlight on FOWLP, Monolithic 3D IC, and 3D TSVs,” (13 May 2015) I am quoted saying: “Show me where monolithic or FOWLP is … can’t seem to find it.”
I wasn’t alone in my thinking; we read in the same piece that, regarding FOWLP, “Rozalia Beica, Yole Développement [now Dow Chemical] says it’s still too soon to tell, and that it will depend on the particular product. For example, she said Yole just had some teardowns done on top smartphones and still didn’t find a single FOWLP inside.”
Readers, the merits of FOWLP (and by extension fan-out panel level packaging) are so obvious to me now I blush at my naïveté of a little more than one year ago.
“Invention has its own algorithm: genius, obsession, serendipity, and epiphany in some unknowable combination.” (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, 12 May 2008.)
Fan-out packaging is a genius invention that serendipitously accommodates heterogeneous integration in a cost-conscious way, where 3D IC processes find difficulty, and, as a result of my FOWLP epiphany, I am now obsessed.
Not obsessed enough to purchase a Samsung Galaxy S7. (“System Plus Consulting recently performed a Reverse Costing® on a high-volume FOWLP component found during the teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S7, Qualcomm WCD9335 Fan-Out WLP Audio Codec.”)
I’m an Apple man.
But definitely obsessed enough to be waiting, pins and needles, for the first Apple iPhone 7 teardown, where it will be revealed that which has been promised. (“Apple’s iPhone 7 Processor is using game Changing Technology with an ASM Chip.”)
I am named after St. Paul the Apostle, née Saul before his famous epiphany.
And I think this is The Big Reveal – Fan-Out Wafer Level Packaging, née eWLB, shipping in smartphones today is about as big a deal as I can imagine, one that seemingly happened almost overnight.
An epiphany.
From Santa Clara, CA, thanks for reading. ~PFW
Hi Paul, glad you and the industry are having the epiphany, and as the old joke goes, did it hurt? Just kidding 😉
We, at Rudolph, have been seeing FOWLP in mobile devices since 2009. In fact the first high volume FOWLP devices went into Nokia phones as was presented in an Infineon Investor presentation , if I remember correctly from 2008/2009 time-frame. Today, between Inspection and Lithography and software, our estimate is that we touch approx 85% of all FO packages manufactured today.
We have done work on split-die, multi-die, large-die, 2um RDL on FO and of course panels. Yes the flexibility of FO as a platform is impressive. There was a seminal paper in 2006 from Infineon that listed the applications.
We are also fairly sure that in the next Apple iPhone 7 tear-down , an FO package will be featured prominently 🙂
Always enjoy your articles!
See you at IMAPs!
Rajiv
Hi Rajiv,
Thank you for your comments about Rudolph and FOWLP. It helps to have more of the history, particularly from the Inspection and Lithography side.
I know none of this happened overnight, and I appreciate the dedicated efforts you guys and others, both from the supplier-side and from the OSAT / IDM-side, have made along the way to make FOWLP happen commercially.
What a difference a year makes, from the FvT 2015 piece to this one!
And thank you also for the kind words – it’s always great to hear from readers, particularly highly knowledgeable ones like you. See you at IMAPS!
Paul