Reliability Assessment of Printed Wiring Board Materials for Optical Data Link Applications

Packaging demands for VLSI devices have increased in AT&T for the past couple of years. Many packages were originally developed using commercial multilayer ceramic technology. However, the package cost is relatively high and there is an increasing trend to use printed wiring board (PWB) technology to replace these ceramic packages for certain applications. PWB chip package technology is attractive because it offers potential for low cost, high performance and an on-shore alternative to ceramic packages.