Thomas R. Miller

Bio: Thomas R. Miller is an academic researcher from IBM. The author has contributed to research in topics: Printed circuit board & Layer (electronics). The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 34 publications receiving 661 citations. Previous affiliations of Thomas R. Miller include GlobalFoundries.

Circuitized substrate and method of making same

Abstract: A method of making a circuitized substrate in which a commoning layer is used to form multiple, substantially vertically aligned conductive openings in a multilayered component such as a laminate interposer for coupling a chip to a printed circuit board or the like. The structure, including such a chip and circuit board is ideally suited for use within an information handling system.

Method for making a printed wiring board

Abstract: Via holes are formed in an electrically conductive power plane. Photo-imageable dielectric (PID) material is applied to one side of the power plane filling the via holes. The power plane side with no PID material is exposed to light energy to cure the PID material in the via holes. A developer is used to remove any uncured PID material. Signal plane assemblies comprising a conductive signal plane and a dielectric layer are laminated onto the filled power plane forming a two signal and one power plane (2S1P) structure. In another embodiment, the power plane has PID material applied from both sides. A photo-mask is applied to the power plane and the PID material in the via holes is cured with light energy. A developer is used to remove uncured PID material. Signal plane assemblies, as described above, are laminated onto the filled power plane forming a 2S1P structure.

Manufacturing computer systems with fine line circuitized substrates

Abstract: Circuit boards are manufactured by forming a substrate with a dielectric surface and laminating a metal foil onto the substrate. The metal foil is patterned to form a first wiring layer. A permanent photoimagable dielectric layer is formed over the wiring layer and via holes are formed through the dielectric layer over pads and conductors of the wiring layer. Holes are formed through the substrate and substrate surfaces including the photoimagable dielectric, walls of the via holes, and walls of the through holes subjected to an electroless copper plating process. The process includes seeding the surface, coating the surface with a first solution containing surfactant and electroplating in a second solution in which the level of surfactant is regulated by determining the surface tension and metering surfactant addition to the second solution depending on the determination of surface tension. The copper plating on the photoimagable dielectric is patterned to form an exterior wiring layer which is covered by solder resist with windows over lands around the through holes and surface mount connection pads of the exterior wiring layer to form a high density circuitized substrate. Surface mount components and/or pin in hole components are attached to the circuitized substrate with solder joints between terminals of the components and the lands and/or connection pads to form a high density circuit board assembly. One or more of the circuit board assemblies are mounted in an enclosure with a power supply, CPU, RAM, and I/O means to form an information handling system with increased performance due to shorter signal flight times due to the higher device density.

Fine pitch circuitization with filled plated through holes

Abstract: A high density printed wiring board is prepared by applying an essentially solid material into plated through holes such that the metallized layers within the through hole are unaffected by chemical metal etchants. In this manner, lateral surface metallized layers can exclusively be reduced in thickness by use of said chemical agents. These thinned lateral surface metallized layers are ultimately converted into fine pitch, 25 to 40 microns, circuitry, thereby providing high density boards. Since the through hole wall metallization is unaffected by the etching process, excellent electrical connection between the fine line circuitry is obtained. Various printed wiring board embodiments are also presented.

Composite laminate circuit structure and methods of interconnecting the same

Abstract: A laminate circuit structure assembly is provided that comprises at least two modularized circuitized plane subassemblies; a joining layer located between each of the subassemblies and wherein the subassemblies and joining layer are bonded together with a cured dielectric from a bondable, curable dielectric. The subassemblies and joining layer are electrically interconnected with bondable electrically conductive material. The joining layer comprises dielectric layers disposed about an internal electrically conductive layer. The electrically conductive layer has a via and the dielectric layers each have a via of smaller diameter than the vias in the electrically conductive layer and are aligned with the vias in the electrically conductive layer. The vias are filled with electrically bondable electrically conductive material for providing electrical contact between the subassemblies.

Semiconductor device, and manufacturing method thereof

Abstract: An object is to provide a semiconductor device of which a manufacturing process is not complicated and by which cost can be suppressed, by forming a thin film transistor using an oxide semiconductor film typified by zinc oxide, and a manufacturing method thereof. For the semiconductor device, a gate electrode is formed over a substrate; a gate insulating film is formed covering the gate electrode; an oxide semiconductor film is formed over the gate insulating film; and a first conductive film and a second conductive film are formed over the oxide semiconductor film. The oxide semiconductor film has at least a crystallized region in a channel region.

DRISA: a DRAM-based Reconfigurable In-Situ Accelerator

Abstract: Data movement between the processing units and the memory in traditional von Neumann architecture is creating the “memory wall” problem. To bridge the gap, two approaches, the memory-rich processor (more on-chip memory) and the compute-capable memory (processing-in-memory) have been studied. However, the first one has strong computing capability but limited memory capacity/bandwidth, whereas the second one is the exact the opposite.To address the challenge, we propose DRISA, a DRAM-based Reconfigurable In-Situ Accelerator architecture, to provide both powerful computing capability and large memory capacity/bandwidth. DRISA is primarily composed of DRAM memory arrays, in which every memory bitline can perform bitwise Boolean logic operations (such as NOR). DRISA can be reconfigured to compute various functions with the combination of the functionally complete Boolean logic operations and the proposed hierarchical internal data movement designs. We further optimize DRISA to achieve high performance by simultaneously activating multiple rows and subarrays to provide massive parallelism, unblocking the internal data movement bottlenecks, and optimizing activation latency and energy. We explore four design options and present a comprehensive case study to demonstrate significant acceleration of convolutional neural networks. The experimental results show that DRISA can achieve 8.8× speedup and 1.2× better energy efficiency compared with ASICs, and 7.7× speedup and 15× better energy efficiency over GPUs with integer operations.CCS CONCEPTS• Hardware → Dynamic memory; • Computer systems organization → reconfigurable computing; Neural networks;

Interconnect structure in a semiconductor device and method of formation

Abstract: In one embodiment, a conductive interconnect ( 38 ) is formed in a semiconductor device by depositing a dielectric layer ( 28 ) on a semiconductor substrate ( 10 ). The dielectric layer ( 28 ) is then patterned to form an interconnect opening ( 29 ). A tantalum nitride barrier layer ( 30 ) is then formed within the interconnect opening ( 29 ). A catalytic layer ( 31 ) comprising a palladium-tin colloid is then formed overlying the tantalum nitride barrier layer ( 30 ). A layer of electroless copper ( 32 ) is then deposited on the catalytic layer ( 31 ). A layer of electroplated copper ( 34 ) is then formed on the electroless copper layer ( 32 ), and the electroless copper layer ( 32 ) serves as a seed layer for the electroplated copper layer ( 34 ). Portions of the electroplated copper layer ( 34 ) are then removed to form a copper interconnect ( 38 ) within the interconnect opening ( 29 ).

Microelectronic substrates with integrated devices

Abstract: A microelectronic substrate including at least one microelectronic device disposed within an opening in a microelectronic substrate core, wherein an encapsulation material is disposed within portions of the opening not occupied by the microelectronic devices, or a plurality microelectronic devices encapsulated without the microelectronic substrate core. At least one conductive via extended through the substrate, which allows electrical communication between opposing sides of the substrate. Interconnection layers of dielectric materials and conductive traces are then fabricated on the microelectronic device, the encapsulation material, and the microelectronic substrate core (if present) to form the microelectronic substrate.

Wired circuit board

Abstract: A wired circuit board has a metal supporting board, an insulating layer formed on the metal supporting board, a conductive pattern formed on the insulating layer and having a pair of wires arranged in spaced-apart relation, and a semiconductive layer formed on the insulating layer and electrically connected to the metal supporting board and the conductive pattern The conductive pattern has a first region in which a distance between the pair of wires is small and a second region in which the distance between the pair of wires is larger than that in the first region The semiconductive layer is provided in the second region