A COMPUTER-AIDED COST ESTIMATION SYSTEM FOR BGA DCA TECHNOLOGY/

The last decade has seen an increasing demand for smaller and more den sely populated printed circuit boards (PCBs). This is partly due to th e market driven need within the electronics industry of reducing the s ize of products while concurrently enhancing their capabilities. Conse quently, the electronics packaging industry is relying upon area array technologies such as Ball Grid Array (BGA) and Direct Chip Attach (DC A) as possible replacements for the traditional peripherally leaded su rface mount packaging formats. However, since these technologies are s till in their nascent stage, the cost benefits obtained from them need to be quantified in an effort to aid in justifying their use. This pa per describes a Computer Aided Cost Estimation (CAGE) system which has been developed to justify the use of BGA/DCA devices.