Rudolph Technologies Inc. will ship its JetStep S Lithography System to an outsourced assembly and test facility in Asia for the production of system-in-package (SIP) products that combine sensor, processor and memory functions for the automotive industry. “Inherently large in size with a rectangular form factor, a SIP is ideally suited for panel manufacturing,” said Rich Rogoff, vice president and general manager of Rudolph’s lithography systems group. “Panels can accommodate a higher number of SIPs, which reduces the cost of manufacturing advanced packages due to the rectangular shape and large surface area. Generally speaking, a typical panel would allow approximately 150 percent more devices to be processed compared to wafer-level processes. The JetStep S System was selected because of its ability to process very large panel sizes up to 650 mm × 720 mm and its large field size that optimizes throughput for larger packages.” Moving from round wafers to rectangular panels saves corner space, delivering a roughly 10 percent improvement in surface utilization. The larger size of the substrate and the improved fit between the mask and substrate maximizes the number of packages on a given substrate, which reduces the transfer overhead by a factor of five. “We see an increasing number of manufacturers investing in panel processing technology across a variety of applications including SIP and large die processing for multiple high-end technologies,” Rogoff said. “This is an exciting transition for our customers and we are pleased that the JetStep system’s unique combination of imaging and handling capabilities is helping early adopters more quickly prove out the cost of ownership benefits of panel processing.” Rudolph Technologies designs, develops and manufactures defect inspection, lithography, process control metrology and process control software used by semiconductor and advanced packaging device manufacturers.