Samsung has found a way to increase memory while allowing for theever-thinner profile of mobile devices, the company announced today.
Its eight-die multichip package (MCP) creates an eight-layer chip stack1.4 mm thick, the space normally taken up by four chips. The chips have acapacity of 3.2 GB.
The electronics company said the eight-die MCP is designed for high-capacitymobile devices such as 3G handsets.
Cheaper and Faster
“Multi-chip packaging is a technology primarily used to circumvent the SoC[system-on-chip] process,” Jim Walker, vice president of research forsemiconductor manufacturing at Gartner/Dataquest, told TechNewsWorld.”It does so at lower final cost and faster time to market.”
SoC wafers contain all the hardware and electronic circuitry for a completesystem, making them more expensive to produce and less flexible.
Samsung said it is the first to develop an eight-die MCP. Stacking chips isnot an innovation. Walker said companies such as Irvine Sensors and Staktekhave been manufacturing these packages for a decade.
Bigger companies, suchas Fujitsu and Samsung, have been creating the stacks for at least threeyears, but most of them have been four-die MCPs.
Next-Gen Mobile
The MCPs are not application specific, but Samsung said it believes itsdenser chip design will propel the creation of next-generation mobile,multifunction devices.
“Since it is a packaging process, it can be used for any application, butthe main drivers have been cell phones and wireless, hand-held products wherewe want the product thin, light and small — i.e., the new Motorola RAZRphone,” Walker said.
Samsung has incorporated all available memory devices — two 1 GB NAND flashmemories, two 256 MB NOR flash memories, two 256 MB mobile DRAMs, one 128 MBUtRAM and one 64 MB UtRAM — into the package.
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