Intel chip-on-board packaging transition

Tab-bonded tape (~$50/piece in 1995) as the precursor to chip-on-board technology that eliminated the aluminum oxide package. Includes Tom's anecdote of meeting Craig Barrett at Intel Chandler, Arizona, and the cubicle-culture aside.

[Tom passes around a tab-bonded chip.] Here we have what they call tab bonding, tape automated bonding. It actually has about 400 inputs and outputs around the perimeter. What they did — the reason Intel would do this — you have what you call inner lead bonds, which Intel would make and make the chip to the tab tape, and they would sell you this little cartridge with the tab tape. By the way, about 1995 when Intel gave me these things, the tab tape cost about $50 a piece. I had a bunch of high school students coming in for a Saturday at MIT, and I called up a friend who was one of the — his badge number was less than 1,000 at Intel, and your badge number was your hire date. So he was one of the first 1,000 people. He had taken me over to meet Craig Barrett, who became the CEO. Craig Barrett was a materials science professor at Stanford who left in his youth to go to this company called Intel that Gordon Moore was founding.