Samsung 
has found a way to increase memory while allowing for the
ever-thinner profile of mobile devices, the company announced today.
Its eight-die multichip package (MCP) creates an eight-layer chip stack 1.4 mm thick, the space normally taken up by four chips. The chips have a capacity of 3.2 GB.
The electronics company said the eight-die MCP is designed for high-capacity
mobile 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 for semiconductor 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 complete system, making them more expensive to produce and less flexible.
Samsung said it is the first to develop an eight-die MCP. Stacking chips is not an innovation. Walker said companies such as Irvine Sensors and Staktek have been manufacturing these packages for a decade.
Bigger companies, such as Fujitsu and Samsung, have been creating the stacks for at least three years, but most of them have been four-die MCPs.
Next-Gen Mobile
The MCPs are not application specific, but Samsung said it believes its denser 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, but
the main drivers have been cell phones and wireless, hand-held products where
we want the product thin, light and small -- i.e., the new Motorola (NYSE: MOT) RAZR
phone," Walker said.
Samsung has incorporated all available memory devices -- two 1 GB NAND flash
memories, two 256 MB NOR flash memories, two 256 MB mobile DRAMs, one 128 MB
UtRAM and one 64 MB UtRAM -- into the package.
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