Determination of area-array bond pitch for optimum MCM systems: a case study

Microelectronics system designers need to understand and evaluate the impact of advanced packaging parameters which have become an integral part of microelectronics systems. This paper evaluates the impact of bond pitch for a flipchip multichip system through a case study. The SUN MicroSparc CPU was used as a representative of a large design where the design has to be partitioned and interconnected using MCM technology. Early analysis techniques were used to analyze the design for various pitches ranging from 150 to 400 micron in 50 micron increments. Results suggest that various bond pitches affect the system cost/performance and there is a minimum pitch at which lowering the pitch will degrade the cost/performance metrics.