Evaluation of Molded Flip-chip BGA Packages

Ganesh Sure, MJ Lee, Sam Lau, Miguel Jimarez, Corey Reichman, Jesse Galloway, Sasanka Kanuparthi, Jae Yun Kim
Altera Corporation,

Joon Dong Kim
Amkor Technology USA,

Robert Darveaux
Amkor Technology Korea

As the FPGA device technology migrates to 28nm technology node and high performance applications, selecting the right package to meet the customer usability requirements and to achieve product reliability goals becomes important. The paper describes the process used in selecting and qualifying the molded flip-chip BGA for cost effective, high performance 28nm FPGA devices.

A collaborative approach in partnership with the assembly manufacturer was employed to develop customer collateral that includes handling; reflow/rework and heat sink attach guidelines for the molded flip-chip BGA package. A detailed thermal modeling of the package was performed to characterize the thermal performance of the package.

In addition, compressive loading characterization, component level and board level reliability tests were carried out to validate the long term reliability performance of the package in customer use conditions. The results of this study demonstrate that the molded flip-chip BGA package is a cost effective and high reliability solution for 28nm FPGA devices.

Our joint collaboration has resulted in the developing the valuable customer collateral for the FCmBGA package selected for 28nm FPGA device family. The customer usability of the FCmBGA package is shown to be equivalent to the lidded flip-chip BGA package while offering advantages of a low profile package.

The reliability tests show that the 28nm FPGA device in FCmBGA package meets the component and board level reliability requirements in compliance with the IPC and JEDEC standards. The results of this collaborative study show that the FCmBGA package offers advantages of high performance and low cost essential for the 28nm FPGA product family.