Press Room

Taipei, November 07, 2013 – Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc (ASE, NYSE: ASX, TAIEX: 2311) announced today a joint development and production agreement for assembly services of automotive products with Infineon Technologies AG (FSE: IFX / OTCQX: IFNNY). The collaboration will focus on enabling copper wire bonding for QFP packages in automotive microcontrollers and manufacturing.

“Enabling copper wire bonding for QFP packages in microcontrollers will further enhance our competitive strength in the automotive market, ” said Peter Schaefer, VP and GM of the Automotive Microcontroller business unit at Infineon Technologies. “We trust in ASE with their strong manufacturing background to fulfill the stringent automotive market quality requirements and build on the long existing partnership to enlarge our current QFP portfolio for future microcontrollers.” 

One of the major drivers in the semiconductor industry’s use of copper was the rising cost of go ld. Copper wire bonding has made IC assembly more competitive in terms of cost. Copper also has excellent performance in thermal and electrical conductivity. The ASE Group has been a forerunner in copper wire bonding assembly manufacturing services since 2008 and has shipped more than 25 billion units of copper wire IC packages to date. 

“This announcement marks another milestone in ASE’s technology roadmap. The use of copper wire bonding in packages for the automotive market requires adherence to a higher threshold of quality assurance standards, ” said Dr Tien Wu, COO of the ASE Group. “Our collaboration with Infineon will enable ASE to learn and adopt world class standards from a leading automotive semiconductor company.”