Development of Packaging and Testing Industry

IC packaging increasingly plays a more important role in the More-than-Moore era. Wire bonding, flip chip, and through-silicon-via (TSV) are mainstream interconnection technologies since the 1960s. System-in-Packaging (SiP) was proposed in the early 2000s and is becoming popular in industry. The Packaging and Testing (PT) industry in China has developed very quickly in the last 15 years. There are different collaborative innovations, such as new cooperation models of Industry-University-Research, strategic alliance for IC assembly and testing, establishment of technology research center, etc. With these innovations, the PT industry has expanded rapidly and gradually integrated with leading edge technologies. According to CSIA, the revenue of Packaging and Testing is about one-third of the whole semiconductor industry in China. There are two major business models in PT industry all over the world. One is the PT factories being subordinate to the integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), and the other is independent PT houses also known as Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Testing (OSAT). In China, some universities and research institutes are working on packaging technologies for contributing to industry promotion.