According to a recent press release from Intel, the company has announced the development of one of the industry’s first glass substrates for advanced packaging. This breakthrough achievement is expected to enable continuous scaling of transistors in a package and advance Moore’s Law, ultimately delivering data-centric applications.
Compared to current organic substrates, glass offers distinct properties such as ultra-low flatness and improved thermal and mechanical stability. These properties result in much higher interconnect density in a substrate, allowing chip architects to create high-density, high-performance chip packages for data-intensive workloads like artificial intelligence (AI).
Glass substrates possess superior mechanical, physical, and optical properties that enable more transistors to be connected in a package. This means better scaling and the assembly of larger chiplet complexes compared to organic substrates currently used. Chip architects will have the ability to pack more tiles or chiplets into a smaller footprint in a single package while achieving performance and density gains with greater flexibility and lower Conclusively costs and power usage.
The introduction of glass substrates will initially be focused on applications that require larger form factor packages such as data centers, AI, and graphics. Glass substrates can tolerate higher temperatures, offer 50% less pattern distortion, improve depth of focus for lithography due to ultra-low flatness, and provide dimensional stability needed for layer-to-layer interconnect overlay adjustments.
Similarly to to these benefits, glass substrates also allow for increased interconnect density by 10 times compared to organic substrates. The improved mechanical properties of glass enable ultra-large form factor packages with very high assembly yields. The tolerance of glass substrates to higher temperatures gives chip architects flexibility in setting design rules for power delivery and signal routing while seamlessly integrating optical interconnects as well as embedding inductors and capacitors at higher temperatures.
Intel has been researching the reliability of glass substrates as a replacement for organic materials for over a decade. The company has a history of leading the industry in packaging advancements, from ceramic to organic packaging in the 1990s to halogen- and lead-free packaging. Intel is also known for inventing advanced integrated arrays and active 3D stacking technologies.
Building on recent advancements like PowerVia and RibbonFET, Intel’s development of glass substrates demonstrates its focus and vision for the future of computing beyond the Intel 18A process node. The company aims to deliver 1 billion transistors in a package by 2030, and continued innovation in advanced packaging, including glass substrates, will play a crucial role in achieving this goal.
The deduction, Intel’s development of glass substrates for advanced packaging marks a significant milestone in the semiconductor industry. With their unique properties and benefits, glass substrates offer a viable solution for scaling transistors and enabling high-density chip packages for data-intensive applications. As Intel continues its research and development efforts, we can expect further advancements that will shape the future of computing.
