Wearable ultra-thin miniaturized mobile communications
View Patent ↗A cellular telephone is provided with a wearable housing, desirably in a form which can be concealed in the user's clothing, wallet, or other place. The housing may be devoid of switches or buttons for controlling the cellular telephone, and control inputs can be provided through free space communications such as a short-range radio link. A module for use in portable communications devices includes chips superposed on one another on a stack, and incorporates an interposer for facilitating connections between the chips.
1. A module for use in a portable communications device comprising:
(a) chips including an ASIC, a plurality of memory chips and an additional chip, the chips being superposed in a stack and electrically interconnected with one another,
(b) an interposer having top and bottom sides disposed within the stack between two of said chips, the interposer having upper terminals exposed at the top side and lower terminals exposed at the bottom side, at least some of upper terminals being electrically connected to at least some of the lower terminals, the interconnections between at least two of the chips extending through the interposer,
(c) a bottom unit substrate having a top side facing upwardly toward the interposer, a bottom side facing downwardly away from the interposer, top side interconnection terminals exposed at the top side of the bottom unit substrate, and bottom side terminals exposed at the bottom side of the bottom unit substrate, the bottom side terminals including bottom side chip connection terminals and module mounting terminals, one of the chips being mounted to the top side of the bottom unit substrate, another one of the chips being mounted to the bottom side of the bottom unit substrate and connected to the bottom side chip connection terminals of the bottom unit substrate, at least some of the top side terminals being connected to the interposer, the module mounting terminals being unoccupied by the connection to the lowermost one of the chips.
2. A module as claimed in claim 1 wherein the ASIC is mounted to the top side of the bottom unit substrate and the additional chip is mounted to the bottom side chip connection terminals.
3. A module as claimed in claim 2 wherein further comprising a chip scale package having a CSP substrate carrying CSP terminals, the additional chip being carried on the CSP substrate and the CSP terminals being bonded to the bottom side chip connection terminals of the bottom unit substrates.
4. A module as claimed in claim 2 wherein bottom unit substrate has a central region and a peripheral region surrounding the central region, the top side interconnection terminals and the module mounting terminals being disposed in the peripheral region, the ASIC and the additional chip overlying one another in the central region.
5. A module as claimed in claim 4 further comprising memory chip unit substrates, said memory chips being carried on the memory chip unit substrates, the memory chip unit substrates and memory chips being superposed on the top side of the interposer.
6. A module as claimed in claim 4 wherein the memory chips include DRAM chips and flash chips, the DRAM chips and flash chips being carried on different ones of the memory chip unit substrates.
7. A module as claimed in claim 6 wherein the memory chip unit substrates have central regions and peripheral regions, the memory chip unit substrates having unit substrate terminals disposed in the peripheral regions of the memory chip unit substrates.
8. A module as claimed in claim 7 wherein the unit substrate terminals of a first one of the memory chip unit substrates include pass-through terminals exposed at opposite surfaces of the first unit substrate and chip connection terminals, the chip connection terminals being electrically connected to the memory chip carried on the first unit substrate, the pass-through terminals being unconnected to the memory chip carried on the first unit substrate, and another one of the memory chip unit substrates includes terminals aligned with and electrically connected to the pass-through terminals of the first memory chip unit substrate.
9. A module as claimed in claim 8 further comprising passive components mounted to the interposer and electrically connected to at least some of the upper and lower terminals.
10. A module as claimed in claim 2 having a height less than about 1.7 mm.
11. A module as claimed in claim 9 having a horizontal dimension less than about 13 mm.
12. A module as claimed in claim 11 having at least 400 module mounting terminals and at least 100 bottom chip mounting terminals.
13. A module as claimed in claim 2 wherein the additional chip is selected from the group consisting of image processing chips, power management chips and local wireless communication control chips.
14. A portable communications device comprising a circuit panel and a module as claimed in claim 2 mounted to the circuit panel.