Increased miniaturization of components, greater packaging density of an integrated circuit die (“IC”), higher performance, and lower cost are ongoing goals of the computer industry. IC package technology continues advances in miniaturization to increase density of integrated circuit or semiconductor components within these packages. The miniaturization of IC packages decreases sizes of products made from these packages in response to continually increasing demands for information and communication products in ever-reduced sizes, thicknesses, and costs, along with ever-increasing performance.
These increasing requirements for miniaturization are particularly noteworthy, for example, in portable information and communication devices such as cellular phones, hands-free cellular phone headsets, personal data assistants (“PDA's”), camcorders, notebook computers, and so forth. All of these devices continue to be made smaller and thinner to improve their portability. Accordingly, a large-scale integrated circuit (“LSI”) within an IC package is required to be made smaller and thinner. The LSI package configurations that house and protect the LSI are required to be made smaller and thinner as well.
Many conventional packages for integrated circuits, semiconductors or chips are of the type where a semiconductor die is molded into a package with a resin, such as an epoxy molding compound. These packages have a lead frame whose leads are projected from the package body to provide a path for signal transfer between the die and external devices.
Other conventional package configurations have contact terminals or pads formed directly on the surface of the package. Such a conventional semiconductor package is fabricated through the following processes: a die-bonding process (mounting the semiconductor die onto the paddle of a lead frame), a wire-bonding process (electrically connecting the semiconductor die on the paddle to inner leads using lead frame wires), a molding process (encapsulating a predetermined portion of the assembly, containing the die, inner leads and lead frame wires, with an epoxy resin to form a package body), and a trimming process (completing each assembly as individual, independent packages).
The semiconductor packages thus manufactured are then mounted by matching and soldering the external leads or contact pads of the package to a matching pattern on a circuit board to enable power and signal input/output (“I/O”) operations between the semiconductor devices in the packages and the circuit board.
Different challenges arise from increased function integration and miniaturization. For example, a semiconductor product having increased function may be smaller but still require a large number of inputs/outputs (I/O). The size reduction increases the I/O density or decreases the I/O pitch for the integrated circuit die package and its respective integrated circuit die carriers.
The ever-increasing I/O density trend presents a myriad of manufacturing problems. Some of these problems reside in the IC die manufacturing realm, such as fine pitch connections and reliability of these connections. Others problems involve mounting these increase I/O density integrated circuit dies on carriers for packaging. Yet other problems reside in the realm of the printed circuit board or the system board that receives the integrated circuit die package having the fine pitch I/O or a large number of I/Os in an ever-shrinking space.
Thus, a need still remains for an integrated circuit die package system providing low cost manufacturing, improved yield, and improved reliability. In view of the ever-increasing need to save costs and improve efficiencies, it is more and more critical that answers be found to these problems.
Solutions to these problems have been long sought but prior developments have not taught or suggested any solutions and, thus, solutions to these problems have long eluded those skilled in the art.