Electronic Packaging Evolution in IBM

Abstract

A quarter century of innovation in the development of packaging for semiconductors has culminated in the announcement of the IBM 4300 Series of computers and the IBM 3081. This technology has been built on a broad and expanding base starting with packaging for the 1400 Series in the late 1950s. In the next series, System/360, IBM chose to follow a unique approach which employed solder joints for the semiconductor connections, allowing ultimately a higher density and total number of interconnections compared to the rest of the industry. This has driven the packaging at the module level to achieve extremely high density and has led to multichip interconnections and multilayers on this first level of package. The dramatically increasing circuit function at the module level requires area arrays of pins to be able to get enough of them in a small area. Thus the next level (second level) of packaging has likewise been driven to provide many layers of dense interconnections to link to the module pins. New types of plated through holes join the many layers of interconnection. The highlights of the technical approaches which have been developed over the twenty-five-year period are discussed briefly in this paper. IntroductionThe increasing complexity of electronic packaging in IBM in this last quarter century has been driven by increasing integration on the semiconductor chip and the growth of computing power and performance in systems.

Semiconductor Manufacturing in IBM, 1957 to the Present: A Perspective

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Microminiature packaging and integrated circuitry: The work of E. F. Rent, with an application to on-chip interconnection requirements

“…The 1971 paper has been referenced extensively in the literature of several scientific fields, including semiconductor circuitry, computer systems, applied mathematics, the applied sciences, and semiconductor manufacturing technology. Specifically, as semiconductor circuitry continues to increase in complexity to ultra-large-scale integrated (ULSI) circuitry, Rent's work has provided guidance for the design and evaluation of ULSI chips and the technologies with which they are manufactured [2,3]. As an example, researchers have derived theoretical models based on the 1971 interpretation of Rent's work [1,4] to anticipate properties of future computer systems.…”

Immersion tin: Its chemistry, metallurgy, and application in electronic packaging technology

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