Samsung Electronics has confirmed that it is preparing for the trial production of flip-chip ball grid array (FC-BGA) in Vietnam and plans to start mass production in July 2023 at its factory in Thai Nguyen province, northern Vietnam at a meeting with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Hanoi on August 5, 2022.

During the reception, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh intended to request Samsung Electronics CEO Roh Tae-Moon to expand operations, according to Vietnam Investment Review.

Not only does Samsung Electronics promise to help improve competitive capacity for 50 Vietnamese suppliers and promote cooperation with Vietnamese universities and research establishments, but it also plans to launch a research and development center in Hanoi by late 2022 or early 2023.

Indeed, the announcement from Samsung granted Chinh's wish.

To date, Samsung Vietnam has earned US$34.3 billion from exports in 1H22, up 18% compared to 1H21, according to Samsung data. The South Korean conglomerate aims for US$69 billion in export turnover this year and plans to invest an additional US$3.3 billion in Vietnam.

The trade volume between South Korea and Vietnam reached US$78 billion in 2021, accounting for 11.6% of Vietnam's total trade volume. As of late, South Korea is the largest foreign investor in Vietnam, with 9,383 valid investments worth nearly $80 billion.

Samsung's investment in Vietnam has been a highlight example. "The Vietnamese government is committed to creating the best possible conditions for foreign investors in general and Samsung in particular," said Chinh, citing VIR.

Samsung's BGA journey

In 2016, Samsung has begun mass producing the industry's first NVMe PCIe solid-state drive (SSD) in a single ball grid array (BGA) package, for use in PCs and ultra-slim notebook PCs.

The BGA NVMe SSD, named PM971-NVMe, features an extremely compact package that contains all essential SSD components including NAND flash memory, DRAM and controller while delivering performance. Since then, Samsung plans to introduce more high-capacity and ultra-fast NVMe SSDs to meet increasing customer needs for improved performance and greater density.

In 2017, Samsung was the first in the industry to introduce UFS solutions for automotive applications. Today, the company is well-positioned to provide a total memory solution with the new automotive SSD and GDDR6 DRAM.

In 2021, Samsung unveiled an extensive lineup of cutting-edge automotive memory solutions designed for EVs. The lineup includes a 256-gigabyte (GB) PCIe Gen3 NVMe ball grid array (BGA) SSD, 2GB GDDR6 DRAM, and 2GB DDR4 DRAM for high-performance infotainment systems, as well as 2GB GDDR6 DRAM and 128GB Universal Flash Storage (UFS) for autonomous driving systems.

Samsung plans to start mass production in July 2023 at its factory in Thai Nguyen province, northern Vietnam.

About Ball Grid Array (BGA)

Ball Grid Array (BGA) is an arrangement of small, metallic conductor balls on a board that manufacturers use to make a printed circuit board.

These balls are eventually used to make connections with small, precise soldering. This is so that manufacturers can put microprocessors and integrated circuits together in order to make the complete circuit they intend to make or work out for. The process of connecting the small balls is called SMT (surface mount technology).

Bismaleimide Triazine (BT) resin is used in FC-BGA, which saves the additional cost. The main value of FC-BGAs is in their shorter electrical pathways, as compared to other BGA types. This leads to better electrical conductivity and faster performance.

The ratio of Tin to Lead in FC-BGA is 63:37. This also provides an advantage that chips on the substrate can be aligned and corrected without the use of a flip-chip alignment machine, which can be quite expensive.

 

• Link : By Annjil Chong, DIGITIMES Asia