Amkor Technology, Inc, the world''s number one supplier of chip packaging solutions to the global semiconductor industry announced new MLF package in early July. To address growing shipment of its one billionth MicroLeadFrame demand, Amkor has increased capacity for MLF to a weekly run rate of 20 million units, making MLF one of Amkor''s most successful new products. MicroLeadFrame is Amkor''s version of the IC package with the generic nomenclature of QFN, which stands for "quad, flat-pac k, no lead."

"In the past few years we have seen rapid adoption of MLF packaging, which offers system designers an unmatched combination of thermal and electrical performance, ease of use and small footprint," commented Sean Crowley, Amkor''s vice president for leadframe products. "We''ve increased weekly capacity from one million units at the beginning of 2002 to 15 million units currently, and we expect to reach 20 million units by the end of this year. MLF has become a critical package for cellular and WLAN applications, and because of the outstanding performance characteristics, we expect that over time many standard analog and linear chips will begin to migrate into MLF packages. The market for QFN packages is expected to increase four-fold to over 3 billion units by 2006. Amkor''s MLF had an estimated 60% share of the worldwide QFN market in 2002.