Known Good Die

Advances in reducing size and increasing functionality of electronics have been due primarily to the shrinking geometries and increasing performance of integrated circuit technologies. Recently, development efforts aimed at reducing size and increasingfunctionality have focused on the first level of the electronicpackage. The result has been the development of multichip packaging,technologies in which bare IC chips are mounted on a single high density substrate that serves to package thechips, as well as interconnect them. A number of benefits accruebecause of multichip packaging, namely, increased chip density,space savings, higher performance, and less weight. Therefore, thesetechnologies are attractive for today's light weight, portable, highperformance electronic equipment and devices.In spite of these benefits, multichip packaging has not shown the kind of explosive growth and expansion that was predicted[1]. A major inhibitor for these technologies has been theavailability of fully tested and conditioned bare die, orknown good die. This paper reviews the issues and technologies associated with test and burn-in of bareor minimally packaged IC products.     

可配置的媒体处理器:无线多媒体解决方案

线多媒体依赖于复杂的视频软件/服务器技术，而流视频和音频的生成又依赖复杂的处理技术。有一种产品无疑会从无线多媒体技术中得益，这就是个人数字助理(PDA)。然而，不同的PDA所采用的微处理器性能水平不同，如某些支持低帧速率的视频流和用软件处理低分辨率，而另有一些则不支持任何类型的视频流。一个能支持高质量双向视频通信的PDA的系统需要很强的系统计算能力。提高性能的方法之一是采用常见的小型接口标准，如PCMCIA卡和CF卡，最新的PDA都支持这些接口标准。高级视频和无线处理系统都可以采用PCMCIA和CF电路卡的标准进…     

Study of metal barrier deposition-induced damage to porous low-k materials

A unique test structure based on a metal-insulator-semiconductor planar capacitor (Pcap) design was used to investigate several aspects of metal barrier-induced low-k damage. A special term called Effective Damage Thickness was introduced to describe the degree of damage. Ta(N) barrier was deposited on various dielectric films with porosity up to 32%. It has been found that the Effective Damage Thickness increases as the porosity increases. The damage is influenced more by the porosity of low-k films than the film density. Furthermore, the damage was modulated by Ta(N) deposition conditions. More damage was observed when higher target and/or substrate bias power was used, suggesting that the ion energy of the barrier material plays an important role in the low-k damage mechanism. A same degree of damage was observed for Ta barrier as for Ta(N), suggesting that Ta(N) deposition-induced low-k damage was primarily caused by Ta ions not nitrogen. Impact of Ru(Ta) and Cu(Mn) self forming barrier on low-k damage was also investigated. Among all the barriers studied in this work, the Ta-based barriers caused the most damage while the Cu(Mn) self forming barrier had the least damage to the low-k. The atomic masses for Ta, Ru, and Cu are 181, 101, and 64, respectively, corresponding with the observed degree of damage in the low-k material.     

Three-dimensional anatomical model-based segmentation of MR brainimages through principal axes registration

Model-based segmentation and analysis of brain images depends on anatomical knowledge which may be derived from conventional atlases. Classical anatomical atlases are based on the rigid spatial distribution provided by a single cadaver. Their use to segment internal anatomical brain structures in a high-resolution MR brain image does not provide any knowledge about the subject variability, and therefore they are not very efficient in analysis. The authors present a method to develop three-dimensional computerized composite models of brain structures to build a computerized anatomical atlas. The composite models are developed using the real MR brain images of human subjects which are registered through the principal axes transformation. The composite models provide probabilistic spatial distributions, which represent the variability of brain structures and can be easily updated for additional subjects. The authors demonstrate the use of such a composite model of ventricular structure to help segmentation of the ventricles and cerebrospinal fluid of MR brain images. Here, a composite model of ventricles using a set of 22 human subjects is developed and used in a model-based segmentation of ventricles, sulci, and white matter lesions. To illustrate the clinical usefulness, automatic volumetric measurements on ventricular size and cortical atrophy for an additional eight alcoholics and 10 normal subjects were made. The volumetric quantitative results indicated regional brain atrophy in chronic alcoholics     

Nightly@nbc.com: Audience Scope and the Perception of Interactivity in Viewer Mail on the Internet

A content analysis looked at 650 Internet mail messages sent to NBC Nightly News in response to an invitation during a series dealing with the impact of new technologies. Message indexes were created to reflect the scope of the audience they addressed. Macro-scopic messages were formal, dealt with political issues, and either did not mention technology or mentioned mass media. These messages resembled a letter to a newspaper editor. Mezzoscopic messages were positive and avoided political issues. They congratulated NBC as a team for their work on the technology series and tended to mention computers. Micro-scopic messages stood out for their authors' high perception of interactivity. These messages mentioned computer technology more than any other group and appear similar to face-to-face communication in many ways. Results are discussed in terms of how the relationship between media users' perceived sense of interactivity and the scope of the audience they address are related to message style and content.     

An X-ray Radiography Study of the Effect of Thermal Cycling on Damage Evolution in Large-Area Sn-3.5Ag Solder Joints

There is a need for next-generation, high-performance power electronic packages and systems utilizing wide-band-gap devices to operate at high temperatures in automotive and electricity transmission applications. Sn-3.5Ag solder is a candidate for use in such packages with potential maximum operating temperatures of about 200°C. However, there is a need to understand the thermal cycling reliability of Sn-3.5Ag solders subject to such high-temperature operating conditions. The results of a study on the damage evolution occurring in large-area Sn-3.5Ag solder joints between silicon dies and direct bonded copper substrates with Au/Ni-P metallization subject to thermal cycling between 200°C and 5°C are presented in this paper. Interface structure evolution and damage accumulation were followed using high-resolution X-ray radiography, cross-sectional optical and scanning electron microscopies, and X-ray microanalysis in these joints for up to 3000 thermal cycles. Optical and scanning electron microscopy results showed that the stresses introduced by the thermal cycling result in cracking and delamination at the copper–intermetallic compound interface. X-ray microanalysis showed that stresses due to thermal cycling resulted in physical cracking and breakdown of the Ni-P barrier layer, facilitating Cu-Sn interdiffusion. This interdiffusion resulted in the formation of Cu-Sn intermetallic compounds underneath the Ni-P layer, subsequently leading to delamination between the Ni-rich layer and Cu-Sn intermetallic compounds.     

Host Exciton Confinement for Enhanced Förster‐Transfer‐Blend Gain Media Yielding Highly Efficient Yellow‐Green Lasers

This paper reports state‐of‐the‐art fluorene‐based yellow‐green conjugated polymer blend gain media using Förster resonant‐energy‐transfer from novel blue‐emitting hosts to yield low threshold (≤7 kW cm^?2) lasers operating between 540 and 590 nm. For poly(9,9‐dioctylfluorene‐co‐benzothiadiazole) (F8BT) (15 wt%) blended with the newly synthesized 3,6‐bis(2,7‐di([1,1′‐biphenyl]‐4‐yl)‐9‐phenyl‐9H‐fluoren‐9‐yl)‐9‐octyl‐9H–carbazole (DBPhFCz) a highly desirable more than four times increase (relative to F8BT) in net optical gain to 90 cm^?1 and 34 times reduction in amplified spontaneous emission threshold to 3 µJ cm^?2 is achieved. Detailed transient absorption studies confirm effective exciton confinement with consequent diffusion‐limited polaron‐pair generation for DBPhFCz. This delays formation of host photoinduced absorption long enough to enable build‐up of the spectrally overlapped, guest optical gain, and resolves a longstanding issue for conjugated polymer photonics. The comprehensive study further establishes that limiting host conjugation length is a key factor therein, with 9,9‐dialkylfluorene trimers also suitable hosts for F8BT but not pentamers, heptamers, or polymers. It is additionally demonstrated that the host highest occupied and lowest unoccupied molecular orbitals can be tuned independently from the guest gain properties. This provides the tantalizing prospect of enhanced electron and hole injection and transport without endangering efficient optical gain; a scenario of great interest for electrically pumped amplifiers and lasers.     

Topology design and bridge-capacity assignment for interconnecting token ring LANs: A simulated annealing approach

We address the problem of determining the topology and bridge-capacity assignments for a network connecting a number of token rings via source-routing bridges. The objective is to minimize the cost of bridge installations while meeting the network users' performance requirements. The problem is modeled as a mixed 0–1 integer program. A comparison is given between two solution algorithms: a simulated annealing algorithm using the flow-deviation algorithm for each routing subproblem, and a drop algorithm using the simplex method for the same subproblems to provide benchmark solutions. In the former algorithm, the routing subproblem is formulated as a nonlinear program with penalty functions to model node and link capacity constraints, and in the latter as a multicommodity flow model with the same capacity constraints. Computational results show that the simulated-annealing/flow-deviation algorithm produced substantially better solutions than the LP-based drop algorithm.     

SIMS characterization of HgCdTe and related II-VI compounds

The production of consistent high purity materials is critical for improvement in performance and sensitivity of II-VI photovoltaic and photoconductive devices. Information regarding the energy band structure and impurity or defect levels present in the material is essential to understand and enhance the performance of current detectors along with the development of future novel devices. Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) is capable of providing information of purity, junction depths, dopant distribution, and stoichiometry in the material. SIMS techniques can achieve high detection sensitivities in very small analytical volumes and for a wide range of elements (almost the entire periodic table). SIMS analysis also provides unique capabilities for localizing atomic distribution in two and three dimensions. Ion images can be obtained by registering the positions of mass selected ions formed in the sputtering process. The combination of excellent detection sensitivity, high mass resolution, depth profiling capability, and high resolution image acquisition on a wide spectrum of elements by a SIMS instrument is not matched by any other instrumentation technique.     

Robust least-squares estimation with a relative entropy constraint

Given a nominal statistical model, we consider the minimax estimation problem consisting of finding the best least-squares estimator for the least favorable statistical model within a neighborhood of the nominal model. The neighborhood is formed by placing a bound on the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between the actual and nominal models. For a Gaussian nominal model and a finite observations interval, or for a stationary Gaussian process over an infinite interval, the usual noncausal Wiener filter remains optimal. However, the worst case performance of the filter is affected by the size of the neighborhood representing the model uncertainty. On the other hand, standard causal least-squares estimators are not optimal, and a characterization is provided for the causal estimator and the corresponding least favorable model. The causal estimator takes the form of a risk-sensitive estimator with an appropriately selected risk sensitivity coefficient.