Gallium Arsenide wafer scale integration

Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) digital MESFET technology has recently begun to appear in the semiconductor marketplace. The initial commercial offerings are at the small to medium scale integration levels. The high speed of these parts would seem to be very attractive for designers of high performance signal processing equipment. Persistent yield problems, however, have prevented the appearance of large scale integrated circuits. As a result, intrapackage and interpackage signal propagation problems such as coupling, parasitics and delay are likely to negate much of the benefits of the fast MESFET logic devices for large systems constructed with such small scale building blocks. An early packaging concept, Wafer Scale Integration (WSI), which could possibly be used to address some of these limitations is reexamined.