South Korea’s LG Electronics Ltd has announced a strategic alliance with Tessera, a US designer of chip packaging systems, to jointly develop technology for a high-end integrated circuit board. The LG Group sold its semiconductor operation, LG Semicon, to Hyundai Electronics Industries (CI No 3,699) and this is the first sign that it has not completely abandoned its interest in chip technology.
A company statement said chip scale package technology will be employed to make a circuit board only 120% the size of a chip. It went on to say the current generation of IC boards are one-sided, and the two partners will work to develop a two-sided CSP circuit. The partnership will help enhance LG’s position in the fast-growing chip segment market, which will reach $3bn globally in 2000, he said. The worldwide demand for CSP boards is estimated at 1.2 billion units this year and 2.1 billion next year.
