ARGH DINKY CHIPS!!!

[Martin Czech]

:::Wow! Is this April or something?
:::
:::Not to worry, pretty soon they will come out with a nanobot that will be
:::programmed via radio to walk the chip out to the right spot on your
:::board and solder it down....
:::
:::In the meantime, start investing/hoarding in DIPs. You can still buy
:::TUBES afterall...

Well, I think integrated solutions are arround for some time now,
and still a surprisingly high number of discrete components is being used.
So, I guess we will have quite a lot of time until the last discrete components
vanish. Which I don't believe, because one still needs a tranny here and there,
and there are high voltage needs, power needs etc., which are not easily satisfied
with ic technology.

These "bump" things are very interesting for semiconductor manufacturers,
because one can mix very different technologies, i.e. process variants.
A microprocessor needs a proces that differs a lot from a FLASH or DRAM process.
We have learned that one cannot have both on a single chip with reasonable
speed/size/cost. The same applies to analog systems on mixed signal systems,
the analog people are not very pleased with single supply voltages like 1.8V.

So, sometimes it is better to forget these single chip ideologies and to
make modules out of several chips, which is expensive with wire bonding,
thus flip-chip and bumps. Some ics one can buy today -say in a 64 pin
SDIP- are actually modules.

One can also bond/flip chips directly to a pcb, and put a glob of plastic
on it, but that's horror for any precision application. How can one avoid
mechanical stress on the die? Mechanical stress is one of the main causes
for offset problems today, the best thing to avoid this is still a metal
can (top hat).

m.c.