General > General Technical Chat
Working with a Manufacturer to Repackage Their Silicon
james_s:
Is this a product that you're still manufacturing rather than just servicing old ones? If so then maybe do a respin of the board to use the currently available ICs?
shanekent:
This is a product that is still being manufactured and the ICs plug into a module that is available to the end customer. The end customer off-times will remove the IC from the module and plug in a new one that has been flashed with new and specific fuse settings to tweak the module's operation. I can see a need for approximately 5000pcs or more needed a year for the next few years - that's on the low end of my estimations based on current needs.
-S
magic:
No experience here with packaging but some experience with tearing chips down ;)
Anything involving acid probably isn't going to be cost effective at industrial scale. I don't quite see the labor on that being cheaper than assembling an adapter PCB.
Analog IC performance may be sensitive to some details of the packaging process, particularly if it's plastic.
PLCC sockets are a thing so you could make a new board, but existing customers would be stuck with their old chips or forced to upgrade the board / get an adapter.
Someone:
--- Quote from: shanekent on April 26, 2020, 12:47:27 am ---Is it fair to assume that most manufacturers supply their die to a common assembly house to have them package it into the needed package? Not something I had thought about as I figured the die creation and packaging happened in the same facility.
--- End quote ---
Depends on the specific part, and scale of the manufacturer. For example smaller "fabless" groups will have several different companies in their production chain and one of them will do package assembly, with tested silicon from a fab (or intermediate test house), and packaging supplied from yet another manufacturer.
The only person who can answer your questions on price/availability is a company with the rights to the chip you are talking about (the publicly visible brand on the chip may not be that company).
coppice:
--- Quote from: Someone on April 27, 2020, 10:37:19 am ---
--- Quote from: shanekent on April 26, 2020, 12:47:27 am ---Is it fair to assume that most manufacturers supply their die to a common assembly house to have them package it into the needed package? Not something I had thought about as I figured the die creation and packaging happened in the same facility.
--- End quote ---
Depends on the specific part, and scale of the manufacturer. For example smaller "fabless" groups will have several different companies in their production chain and one of them will do package assembly, with tested silicon from a fab (or intermediate test house), and packaging supplied from yet another manufacturer.
The only person who can answer your questions on price/availability is a company with the rights to the chip you are talking about (the publicly visible brand on the chip may not be that company).
--- End quote ---
Its not just fabless companies. Most people who do a large percentage of their wafer fabrication in house subcontract a large percentage of their assembly and test work these days.
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