There has been a lot of talk lately about the prospects for the introduction of glass substrates. But the appearance of chips with such substrates is closer than we think. Information from the Korean press has appeared that AMD is preparing to introduce this technology in the period from 2025 to 2026. The properties of glass substrates and their perfectly flat surface provide better depth of field during lithography and are ideal for creating connections in complex microcircuits from several crystals. Such substrates also have increased thermal and mechanical strength, which makes them the optimal choice for high-temperature solutions, for example, for high-performance processors for data centers. This is where AMD will begin to implement a new type of substrate.
The company intends to use glass substrates for powerful chips with SiP (system in a package) packaging technology. Requirements in the field of AI are constantly growing, as are the costs of computing processors for this area. Therefore, the introduction of new technologies here is justified from a commercial point of view. Also, the introduction of new technological processes is becoming increasingly difficult, and the production of large monolithic chips is more expensive. Therefore, creating several chiplets and placing them on one substrate is simpler and more profitable for increasing the overall performance of the chip.
Now all companies are gradually moving in this direction. AMD itself already has experience in creating large chips with 13 crystals on one substrate (EPYC 9004) and even with 22 crystals within one semiconductor device Instinct MI300A. And if we talk about the second “monster”, AMD managed to combine 3 CCD Zen 4 blocks, 6 CDNA 3, 4 I/O blocks with Infinity Cache, 8 HBM3 memory stacks and a 2.5D interposer. Future AI computing accelerators will be even more powerful and complex, so the introduction of a glass substrate is a logical solution. The increased density of intermediate connections will simplify and reduce the cost of creating large hybrids from different crystals.
It is worth noting that the introduction of a new type of substrates is possible closer to 2026. At this time, the launch of new Zen 6 and CDNA 5 architectures is expected, and this will be the optimal time to switch to a new production technology.
Source:
Tom’s Hardware
