From: jws at 
jwsss.com
 To:
 Subject: Re: PDP-1 MCM Modules
  what was the basic purpose of the helium?
 On 8/18/2010 4:37 PM, William Donzelli wrote:
>> Helium filled?!?!? Must have leaked like crazy.
> The Helium was really just a small player in the whole technology of
> the TCM. By far, most of the heat was conducted away through the
> ceramic substrate and the metal pistons to the water cooled cold
> plate. 
 This link has a paper by IBM and Honeywell describing MCM's which
 used the helium in discussion here.
 All of the other discussions I could find are behind various paywalls (ieee,
 elsevier, aip, etc.) which I won't pay for. Thnaks to whoever hindawi is
 for putting it where it is in google, and also accessible.
 this one is apparantly open for reading
 
http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/apec/1982/204239.pdf
 BTW, I googled for this, and it was on the first page, but there are other
 articles
 "ibm mcm modules helium"
 Jim 
Hi
 Although there is the heat transfer, we used to use helium in our MCM
packages when at HaL computers. I was always told that we did it for
leak detecting. They had a helium sniffer ( small mass spec ) after sealing the part.
Dwight