Most expect that by the end of the decade, the semiconductor industry will hit a wall in using organic materials to scale transistors on silicon wafers. Scale is key to advancing chip technology, and glass could be the industry's next big leap.Intel has launched the first glass substrates for next-generation advanced packaging, which will allow the industry to continue advancing Moore's Law beyond 2030. Babak Sabi, senior vice president and general manager of assembly and test development at Intel Corporation, said this innovation took more than a decade of research to perfect.
Compared with modern organic substrates, glass has better thermal, physical and optical properties and can increase interconnect density by a factor of 10. The glass can also withstand higher operating temperatures and reduce pattern distortion by 50% through enhanced flatness, thereby increasing the depth of focus of lithography.
The substrate is able to withstand higher temperatures, which gives designers more flexibility in power delivery and signal routing. At the same time, enhanced mechanical properties will improve assembly yield and reduce waste. Simply put, glass substrates will allow chip designers to pack more chips (or chip units) into the smaller size of a single package while minimizing cost and power consumption.
Intel has been a leader in the semiconductor industry for decades. In the 1990s, the chipmaker pioneered the transition from ceramic to organic packaging and was the first to introduce halogen-free and lead-free packages.
Intel said the glass substrates will initially be used in applications that require larger package sizes, such as those involving graphics, data centers and artificial intelligence. The company expects to offer complete glass substrate solutions starting in the second half of this decade and is on track to achieve 1 trillion transistors on a package by 2030.
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