Over half a century ago, when Gordon Moore was digging to explore the science behind integrated circuits, he had no idea that what he was about to explore would lead to change the definition of technology and the way it would affect the entire humanity in all life aspects. Moore’s law, the seed that flourished peoples’ lives with high mega pixels camera, all sorts of sensors, and facilitated the research of different other technologies that changed the identity of human world, kicks back again with a revolutionizing technology that brings a new generation of chip packaging.
Completing what Moore originally started, many of his dedicated students in Intel followed his path of determination in drawing a future that is even beyond imagination and making sure it sees the light with the best possible application. Intel held a roundtable in which experts discussed the corporate’s adopted strategy in advanced packaging and the capabilities this technology offers its customers.
Advanced packaging is a set of technologies that combines and interconnects multiple chips in one package. It allows users to benefit from a much faster performance with remarkably less cost.
The primarily matrix of driving technical solution mainly relies on three factors: the performance of the technology, the scale of using it, and its cost. The newly improved technology also marks a turning point in offering cutting-edge technology at a competitive price in the market. Intel explained that In addition to cost-savings, advanced packaging allows chip architects to build devices with better performance and more functionality that would otherwise not be possible. Intel® Data Center GPU Max is an example of a product that cannot be built without advanced packaging.
“When it comes to the performance, advanced packaging has proven it can enable transferring data from Chip to chip with the required speeds and excellent signal integrity at the same time,” said Tom Rucker, Vice President of Technology Development and Director of Assembly and Test Technology Development Integration at Intel Corporation. “Of course, the financial constraints and cost targets need also to be met. These metrics achieve a major transition in combining multiple dies in one package which is the Advanced Packaging.”
Through using glass substrates as a more efficient replacement that also reduces cost, Intel seeks to revolutionize processor packaging as never witnessed before. “Glass enables more dimensional stability, resulting in finer features on materials. Therefore, chip architects can scale and get more density, translating into performance benefits for end customers. Finer features also allow for layer count reduction and/or limiting package body size growth, thus helping reduce cost,” Rucker added.
Intel has used the new technology in creating a USB-shaped-like product, which allows customers to smartly use the endless capabilities of advanced packaging. The advanced technology also opens the door to many professionals to make use of it in order to come up with better solutions. The technology is designed for a broad market, including high-end.
“The new generation of the advanced packaging will also be offering some novel architectures and 3D stacking features to allow architects to connect these chips in different ways and take advantage of the flexibility that this platform offers. Advanced packaging allows chip architects to build devices with better performance and more functionality that would otherwise not be possible.” said Pooya Tadayon, Intel Fellow and Director of Assembly and Test Pathfinding at Intel Corporation.
He further elaborated that the benefit includes various circles of users, because “with this new strategy, customers are able to dice up the wafer and use advanced packaging and silicon from different nodes that are optimized for their specific functionalities and stitch them together on a package.”
As a part of Intel flexible solutions, the leading technology offers its customers a new business module that is all about stretchiness in finding the most suitable cooperation type. The technology corporate offers its customers the availability of designing the front end of the product.
“This can be through using Intel manufacturing or any other source using only Intel’s assessment,” explained Mark Gardner, the Senior Director of Foundry Advanced Packaging at Intel Corporation.
He added that Intel also offers to simply test the final product if the customer needs to customize it with all external components. “In the manufacturing stage, we see which components are testable and if there are enough components for a viable test program. We have multiple stages in the process where we run electrical tests, in-line metrology, visual inspections and more to make sure that we cover off on any electrical and mechanical type of yield loss issues,” Gardner added.
For the environmental level, Intel seeks in its newly launched technologies to move to glass substrates, which better alternates other components with a more environment-friendly output. It also allows us to continue to scale and push Moore’s Law forward.
Experts explained that Glass substrates contain certain properties like stiffness that make it better suited for scaling compared to organic packages that they have today. “As we go through processing entire panels, substrates are prone to expanding, shrinking and warping, making it difficult to create finer features and scale dimensions. Glass has a lower coefficient of thermal expansion and as it goes through the manufacturing process, there is more dimensional stability which allows for the patterning of smaller features. We intend glass substrates to be one-to-one replacements with organic substrates, allowing for compatibility with all of the products we have on our roadmap,” they added.
