General
BA
What is Build & Assembly?
CJ
What is Chip Join?
TIM
What is Thermal Interface Material? There are two kinds: TIM1 (between the chip and lid) and TIM2 (between the lid and cold plate). At East Fishkill, we're mostly concerned with TIM1.
SCM
What is a Single Chip Module? Other similar acronyms include DCM for Dual Chip Module and MCM for Multi-Chip Module.
DTC
What is Deep Thermal Cycling? This is one type of testing that our modules go through in reliability after they are built in BA.
EFK
What is East Fishkill? Other location codes include POK for Poughkeepsei & BMT for Bromont.
UF
What is underfill?
SB
What is Seal Band? This material adheres the lid to the laminate.
ASIC
What is an Application Specific Integrated Chip? We don't develop these at East Fishkill for the most part, but IBM does still build them at Bromont.
FA
What is Failure Analysis?
BOM
What is Bill of Materials
FA
What is Failure Analysis?
Decaps
What are Decoupling Capacitors? These components reduce noise and improve performance.
TV
What is a test vehicle? These are experimental module designs with a specific purpose other than to be a fully-functional product module.
BLT
What is Bondline Thickness? This is a metric for the cross-sectional thickness of materials such as TIM1 or SB.
P-
What is Power (one of the 2 product lines we develop)? For example: P-11.
FRT
What is Fries Research Technology? But don't remember that name, just remember that this is where warpage, coplanarity, and other metrology metrics are measured.
HBM
What is High Bandwidth Memory?
CSP
What is a Chip Scale Package? This term applies to most of our parts at East Fishkill.
TSM
What is Top Side Metallurgy? This is the opposite of BSM (Bottom Side Metallurgy), both of which indicate sides of the Module.
Z-
What is Zero Downtime (the other line of products we develop)? Example: Z-Artemis.
CSAM
What is Confocal Scanning Acoustic Microscopy? This one is a bit lengthy, but the important thing to remember is that CSAM is a way to look 'into' a part (to see TIM1 spread, for example) without actually cutting into it.
C4
What is Controlled Collapse Chip Connect? This is a big one, so it's worth writing down.
LGA
What is a Land Grid Array? This refers to the second level connection between the module and the board. LGA's are used on most designs, whereas BGA's (Ball Grid Arrays) are used on some ASICs.
SM
What is Solder Mask? This metal sheet restricts where solder is deposited onto the laminate.