Intel Launches Glass Substrate Program: Redefining Chip Packaging and Promoting Moore's Law Progress

On September 18th local time, chip manufacturer Intel announced a significant breakthrough in the development of glass substrates for next-generation advanced packaging.Prior to the Intel 2023 Innovation Conference held in San Jose, California, this week, Intel announced this "milestone like achievement" and stated that it will redefine the boundaries of chip packaging, providing game-changing solutions for data centers, artificial intelligence, and graphics construction, and promoting Moore's Law progress

On September 18th local time, chip manufacturer Intel announced a significant breakthrough in the development of glass substrates for next-generation advanced packaging.

Prior to the Intel 2023 Innovation Conference held in San Jose, California, this week, Intel announced this "milestone like achievement" and stated that it will redefine the boundaries of chip packaging, providing game-changing solutions for data centers, artificial intelligence, and graphics construction, and promoting Moore's Law progress. The company stated that it will use glass substrates for advanced packaging later this decade.

In 1971, Intel's first microprocessor had 2300 transistors, and now the company's flagship chips have over 100 billion transistors. However, most of this progress comes from the miniaturization of the width between chip circuits. Now this progress has slowed down. The "Moore's Law" invented by Intel founder Gordon Moore (the transistor density of semiconductor chips doubles every 24 months) is even considered invalid. Therefore, Intel has been searching for other ways to keep chip technology following Moore's Law.

When discussing the next steps in chip design, people's focus includes filling more cores, increasing clock speed, reducing transistors, and 3D stacking, with little consideration given to packaging substrates that carry and connect these components.

The substrate is an important component material of the chip packaging body, mainly used to carry and protect the chip and connect the upper layer chip and lower layer circuit board. They provide structural stability for chips (silicon chips are very fragile) and are also a means of transmitting signals. Since the 1970s, substrate design has undergone multiple evolutions, with metal frames being replaced by ceramics in the 1990s and then by organic packaging at the turn of the century. Organic substrates are widely used in current processors.

Intel believes that organic substrates will reach their capacity limits in the coming years, as the company will produce system level packaging (SiP) for data centers, with dozens of small tiles and potential power consumption of several kilowatts. This type of SiP requires very dense interconnections between small chips, while ensuring that the entire package does not bend due to heat during production or use.

Glass substrate refers to replacing organic materials in organic packaging with glass, which does not mean replacing the entire substrate with glass. Therefore, Intel will not install the chip on pure glass, but the material of the substrate core will be made of glass.

Comparison between organic substrate and glass substrate. Image source: Intel

Compared with traditional organic substrates, glass has a series of advantages. One of its outstanding features is its ultra-low flatness, which can improve the depth of focus of lithography, as well as the good dimensional stability of interconnections, which is very important for the next generation of SiP. This type of substrate also provides good thermal and mechanical stability, allowing it to withstand higher temperatures, making it more elastic in data center applications.

In addition, Intel stated that glass substrates can achieve higher interconnect density (i.e. closer spacing), making it possible to increase interconnect density tenfold, which is crucial for the power and signal transmission of the next generation SiP. The glass substrate can also reduce pattern deformation by 50%, thereby improving the depth of focus of lithography and ensuring more precision and accuracy in semiconductor manufacturing.

Intel claims that glass substrates may lay the foundation for achieving an astonishing 1 trillion transistors in a single package over the next decade.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of this technology, Intel has released a fully functional testing chip for clients. This technology will initially be used to build processors for data centers, but as the technology becomes more mature, it will be used for client computing applications. Intel mentioned that graphics processors (GPUs) are one of the possible applications of this technology, which may benefit from increased interconnect density and increased rigidity of glass substrates.

Assemble the test chip substrate.

Intel has invested approximately ten years in glass substrate technology and currently has a fully integrated glass research and development line in Arizona, USA. The company stated that the cost of this production line exceeds $1 billion, and in order for it to operate normally, it is necessary to collaborate with equipment and material partners to establish a complete ecosystem. Only a few companies in the industry can afford such investments, and Intel seems to be the only company to have developed glass substrates so far.

Like any new technology, the production and packaging costs of glass substrates will be more expensive than validated organic substrates. Intel has not yet discussed production. If product development proceeds as planned, the company plans to start shipping later this decade. The first batch of products to receive glass substrate treatment will be their largest and most profitable products, such as high-end HPC (high-performance computing) and AI chips, and will gradually be promoted to smaller chips until this technology can be used for Intel's ordinary consumer chips.

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