OCTOBER 23--August Technology (Minneapolis, MN; www.augusttech.com) has received its first order for a 3Di Series automated wafer- and bump-inspection system shipping to China. The system will be installed at ACE Semiconductor's Shanghai facility as a part of China's first fully functional 200-mm wafer-level chip-scale packaging (WLCSP) process line. "With the Chinese semiconductor industry expected to reach $22 billion by 2006, China will be a key region for the manufacturing of microelectronic devices, and we expect there will be significant opportunities for each of our product lines," explained Dan Nelson, corporate development and strategic marketing.
WLCSP is one of the fastest-growing segments of the advanced packaging market, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 87.9% through 2006, according to Dataquest. This technology, which eliminates the need for additional conventional packaging and assembly processes, is expected to be the next-generation packaging technology because of its low cost and high performance characteristics. August Technology's 3Di Series was specifically designed to serve the advanced packaging and WLCSP markets, in particular with high-throughput 100% 2-D and 3-D inspection and metrology capability.
