Chennai-based SPEL Semiconductor, India’s only semiconductor IC assembly and test company, is accelerating growth with investment of US$286 million over the next five years.

Pericom, both of the US, and O2 Micro of Taiwan. It offers onsite and offshore test engineering support to its customers through its office in Santa Clara, the US.

Diversification

“Although our focus initially had been on the telecom sector, we have diversified into chips for notebooks, cellular phones, digital cameras and PDAs,” said D Balakrishnan COO, SPEL. “Apart from this, we are packaging and testing camera modules for digital cameras. SPEL will be entering the IC designing space for pre-made modules, which IC manufacturers could buy and develop further. Plans for creating a library that customers could use in order to shorten the design cycle time are in the pipeline.”

The company offers a range of packaging services, such as assembly of through-hole, surface mount and leadless packages at low assembly cost. It also assembles thin packages (0.75mm), and handles very low loop (5mm) and fine bond pad pitch (45µm). “Our in-house design and development of custom lead frames to meet specific customer requirements takes a three-week cycle from design to production, while for developing cost-effective new designs its takes about 12-16 weeks from design to prototype sample,” said Balakrishnan.

He added that SPEL has recently partnered with South Korea’s Sunyang DNT Co Ltd on the design, manufacture and marketing of camera modules for use in phones, notebooks and PDAs.

SPEL has also adopted a 100% pure tin process, which has become a popular, cost-effective lead-free choice demanded by customers. The company found switching to this process relatively simple, involving no major capital investment (apart from in a new automatic plating line) and only a few technical concerns.

Once this process was streamlined, SPEL carried out extensive testing on different package types under various stress conditions, and found no abnormal cases of whisker growth. (Whiskers are unwanted growths of conductive filaments which can cause short circuits and failure of the unit.)

“We also adopted the post plate annealing technique (150°C, 1 hour bake) to mitigate any whisker growth. And we realized that this 100%puretin chemistry has proven to be stable and resistant to whisker growth. We have also included the whisker growth study in our regular reliability monitoring plan under various conditions of stress for effective monitoring and control, ”Balakrishnan added.

SPEL’s US$286 million growth plan includes a US$5 million investment in its leadless molded package (LMP) line. This package has increased SPEL’s attractiveness globally. With its current capacity completely sold out, the company is considering further expansion in this package. SPEL also proposes to introduce two new package lines which are currently enjoying increased momentum.

“With the semiconductor market in India going through a rapid-fire growth phase and a number of semiconductor and systems companies establishing their own design centers here, the design services industry will continue to be a primary driver of growth for India’s electronics industry, ”Balakrishnan said.

India is expected to consume US$160 billion worth of electronics by 2016 and the semiconductor portion of this would be more than US$40 billion. Last year, the Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) and Frost & Sullivan reported that the total electronics production as a percentage of GDP has been increasing from 1.5% in 2000-01 to 1.7% in 2004-05. The total electronics production in 2004-05 stood at US$11 billion, upfrom US$9.7 billion in 2003-04. This is expected to reach US$58 billion in 2010 and US$155 billion in 2015.

With the sudden surge of activity in the semiconductor space and the number of companies coming up in this sector, an ongoing problem for chip companies is hiring and retaining good talent. To over come this problem, SPEL has tied up with the Chennai-based AlphaOmega Institute for Semiconductors to offer a post graduate diploma program in IC assembly and testing.

by Sufia Tippu