This week on the IEEE Electronic Components and Packaging Technology Conference, Intel unveiled that it’s growing new chip packaging know-how that may permit for larger processors for AI.
With Moore’s Legislation slowing down, makers of superior GPUs and different knowledge heart chips are having so as to add extra silicon space to their merchandise to maintain up with the relentless rise of AI’s computing wants. However the most measurement of a single silicon chip is mounted at round 800 sq. millimeters (with one exception), in order that they’ve needed to flip to advanced packaging technologies that combine a number of items of silicon in a means that lets them act like a single chip.
Three of the improvements Intel unveiled at ECTC had been aimed toward tackling limitations in simply how a lot silicon you possibly can squeeze right into a single package deal and the way massive that package deal might be. They embrace enhancements to the know-how Intel makes use of to hyperlink adjoining silicon dies collectively, a extra correct methodology for bonding silicon to the package deal substrate, and system to increase the dimensions of a important a part of the package deal that take away warmth. Collectively, the applied sciences allow the combination of greater than 10,000 sq. millimeters of silicon inside a package deal that may be larger than 21,000 mm2—a large space concerning the measurement of 4 and a half credit cards.
EMIB will get a 3D improve
One of many limitations on how a lot silicon can slot in a single package deal has to do with connecting a lot of silicon dies at their edges. Utilizing an natural polymer package deal substrate to interconnect the silicon dies is essentially the most reasonably priced possibility, however a silicon substrate means that you can make extra dense connections at these edges.
Intel’s resolution, launched greater than 5 years in the past, is to embed a small sliver of silicon within the natural package deal beneath the adjoining edges of the silicon dies. That sliver of silicon, referred to as EMIB, is etched with fantastic interconnects that improve the density of connections past what the natural substrate can deal with.
At ECTC, Intel unveiled the most recent twist on the EMIB know-how, referred to as EMIB-T. Along with the same old fantastic horizontal interconnects, EMIB-T gives comparatively thick vertical copper connections referred to as through-silicon vias, or TSVs. The TSVs permit energy from the circuit-board beneath to instantly connect with the chips above as an alternative of getting to route across the EMIB, decreasing energy misplaced by an extended journey. Moreover, EMIB-T accommodates a copper grid that acts as a floor aircraft to cut back noise within the energy delivered as a result of course of cores and different circuits all of the sudden ramping up their workloads.
“It sounds easy, however it is a know-how that brings plenty of functionality to us,” says Rahul Manepalli, vice chairman of substrate packaging know-how at Intel. With it and the opposite applied sciences Intel described, a buyer might join silicon equal to greater than 12 full measurement silicon dies—10,000 sq. millimeters of silicon—in a single package deal utilizing 38 or extra EMIB-T bridges.
Thermal management
One other know-how Intel reported at ECTC that helps improve the dimensions of packages is low-thermal-gradient thermal compression bonding. It’s a variant of the know-how used as we speak to connect silicon dies to natural substrates. Micrometer-scale bumps of solder are positioned on the substrate the place they’ll connect with a silicon die. The die is then heated and pressed onto the microbumps, melting them and connecting the package deal’s interconnects to the silicon’s.
As a result of the silicon and the substrate increase at totally different charges when heated, engineers should restrict the inter-bump distance, or pitch. Moreover, the enlargement distinction makes it tough to reliably make very massive substrates filled with a lot of silicon dies, which is the path AI processors must go.
The brand new Intel tech makes the thermal enlargement mismatch extra predictable and manageable, says Manepalli. The result’s that very-large substrates might be populated with dies. Alternatively, the identical know-how can be utilized to extend the density of connections to EMIB all the way down to about one each 25 micrometers.
A flatter warmth spreader
These larger silicon assemblages will generate much more warmth than as we speak’s techniques. So it’s important that the warmth’s pathway out of the silicon isn’t obstructed. An built-in piece of steel referred to as a warmth spreader is essential to that, however making one large enough for these massive packages is tough. The package deal substrate can warp and the steel warmth spreader itself may not keep completely flat; so it may not contact the tops of the new dies it’s speculated to be sucking the warmth from. Intel’s resolution was to assemble the built-in warmth spreader in elements as an alternative of as one piece. This allowed it so as to add additional stiffening parts amongst different issues to maintain every part in flat and in place.
“Holding it flat at greater temperatures is an enormous profit for reliability and yield,” says Manepalli.
Intel says the applied sciences are nonetheless within the in R&D stage and wouldn’t touch upon when these applied sciences would debut commercially. Nonetheless, they’ll probably should arrive within the subsequent few years for the Intel Foundry to compete with TSMC’s planned packaging expansion.
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