More TSV commercial capacity on line.....

As these blogs have mentioned before, the first signs of the
commercialization of 3D IC technology will be face to face stacking
of two thinned chips (without TSV ) – known as Chip-on-chip,
which has already been used commercially in the Sony Playstation
and the introduction of TSV technology for miniaturization of CIS
(CMOS Image Sensor) for camera modules and other portable
products.

In late January of this year Oki Electric and ZyCube agreed
to combine their technologies to offer the
ZyCSP™  for CIS (CMOS Image Sensor) applications
. promising that the technology would reduce the
height of image sensors to less than 0.6 mm. It was rumored that
Oki and ZyCube jointly invested ¥5 billion to modify an Oki WLP
line to manufacture the ZyCSP. The ZyCSP process flow (as described
by ZyCube) is shown below.

Well  a few weeks ago, on the heels of the
Toshiba announcement ( see Perspectives from the Leading Edge blog
“Imaging
chips with TSV announced for commercialization” - 10/27 )
Oki Electric announced it had established a volume production line
for the Through Silicon Vias ( TSV )based ZyCSP, at its production
site in Tokyo and had in fact started production in
October.  OKI claims that these modules now offer  sensor
and camera module manufacturers the ability to fabricate camera
modules that are half the size of conventional modules. Capacity is
reported to be ramping to 10,000 wafers per month by March 2009 and
a 20,000 wafers per month by March 2010.

Sharp, Fujikura and Sanyo in Japan have all described similar
technology,  all of which appears to stem from the ASET
pre-competitive consortium work done in the 2001 – 2004
timeframe. Outside Japan, ST Micro and  Micron have described
similar backside TSV technology and could also be expected to put
capacity in place. Of course, the first companies in this miniature
camera module space were Shellcase (licensed to Xintec and TSMC and
later bought by Tessera) and Schott who recently sold their
facility  in Singapore to STATS ChipPAC.

These technologies are not yet true 3D IC technology since there
is no chip stacking in these first generation products, but they
are a real first step in getting TSV accepted as
“commodity” capable technology. ….can the rest
be far behind ???