The glass-based chip is a concept given before the Intel 2023 Innovation Conference in SAN Jose, California, the United States, Intel announced this "landmark achievement", which will redefine the boundaries of chip packaging, can provide game-changing solutions for data centers, artificial intelligence and graphics construction, and promote Moore's Law progress.

As organic substrates will reach the limits of their capabilities in the coming years, system-level packages (SIPs) for data centers will be produced, with dozens of small tiles that can consume up to several kilowatts. Such SIPs require very dense interconnections between small chips (chiplet) while ensuring that the entire package does not bend due to heat during production or use.

The excellent mechanical, physical and optical properties of the glass substrate enable the construction of higher performance multi-chip SIPs with 50% more bare metal (die) placed on the chip. In particular, Intel expects glass substrates to be able to achieve very large 24×24cm SIPs that hold multiple pieces of silicon.

Glass substrate refers to replacing the organic material in the organic package with glass, and does not mean replacing the entire substrate with glass. Therefore, the chip will not be mounted on pure glass, but the material of the substrate core will be made of glass.

Glass offers a range of advantages over conventional organic substrates. One of its outstanding features is ultra-low flatness, which improves the focal depth of lithography, and good dimensional stability of the interconnect, which is very important for the next generation of SiP. Such substrates also provide good thermal and mechanical stability, allowing them to withstand higher temperatures and thus be more resilient in data center applications.

The glass substrate enables higher interconnect density (i.e., tighter spacing), making a tenfold increase in interconnect density possible, which is critical for power and signal transmission for the next generation of SiP. The glass substrate also reduces pattern distortion by 50%, which improves the focal depth of photolithography and ensures more precision and accuracy in semiconductor manufacturing.

In China, following the concept of Intel, we have recently experimented with several batches of different methods for the production of glass substrate plates, including the combination of glass Core and ABF, ion injection coating method and through the hole filled copper plating method to initially complete the production of several relatively simple glass substrate plates. So I would like to share with you the results of some experiments for your reference.