Some may recall that they made a big splash back around 1998 with the trade press, hyping a radical new way to make ICs via tubes on a spherical ball - hence the name!

I remember the likes of Semiconductor International and Solid State giving the company a lot of coverage and this went on for a year or two. At the time I can only remember reporting that they were developing something new, but I pretty much put them in the hype-over-reality folder and moved on. I never understood why others thought there was something exciting going on or even why they believed they would actually be able to manufacture devices in volume.

Oh! I do remember a Wired piece in which I was quoted as being rather sceptical of the claims, and, amazingly, it is still online (see here):

(http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,12527,00.html)

As for Ball Semiconductor, they are surprisingly still around. From the running website (http://www.ballsemi.com/), they are also trying a hand at maskless technology and precision machining sub-contracting as well as still playing with ball semiconductors.

It's now ten years since the company was founded so although I am still rolling along, the semiconductor ball may have got stuck in a tube somewhere and flatly refused to budge! Back in 1998, I may have said that ‘time will tell' whether Ball makes it, but time has surely told us on this one!