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Advanced Semiconductor Packaging: 2.5D, 3D Integration, Chiplets and Cost Benefits

The semiconductor industry is rapidly approaching a point of diminishing returns from an investment into shrinking transistors. Manufacturers are faced with higher costs, greater complexity, and more challenging processes to scale semiconductors using lithography technologies such as EUV and multi-patterning.

It is in situations like these that advanced semiconductor packaging can play an important role. GMI Research estimates the Semiconductor Packaging Market will grow at a 6.8% CAGR through 2030. Increasing demand signals that packaging has shifted from its previously secondary role of encapsulating chips, to now being an integral aspect of system-level performance.

Rather than relying solely on smaller process nodes, it can become more beneficial to manufacturer multiple dies, chiplet-based designs, and other technologies within a particular package. Multiple dies can lead to higher chip density, better bandwidth, and more overall performance at a lower power consumption.

Why Advanced Semiconductor Packaging Is Required

The idea is simple: If shrinking a single chip becomes more expensive and difficult, why not improve how multiple components operate in concert?

This is where advanced packaging becomes critical.

Advanced packaging provides manufacturers the ability to place components even closer together, shorten interconnects, and optimize the architecture for specific workload requirements. It is especially critical for consumer electronic devices, high-speed computing, and Artificial Intelligence.

Key Package-level Scaling Technologies

A variety of packaging technologies enable manufacturers to increase performance, without delicate reliance on extreme transistor scaling.

2.5D and 3D Semiconductor Integration

Advanced packing most commonly uses 2.5D and 3D integration.

2.5D integrates multiple dies horizontally and connects them with an interposer. High-bandwidth communication is made possible by this integration. This process allows different dies to carry out specified functions.

3D integration uses 2.5D integration and stacks the dies vertically. This integration helps to reduce the distance that signals travel and increases the density of a system.

These integrations focus mainly on systems such as high-performance computing and AI accelerators. The systems deal with large volumes of data that has to travel at high speeds between multiple processors and memory.

Heterogeneous Integration and Chiplet Architecture

Heterogeneous Integration provides several advantages, and one of them is the ability to use different semiconductor processes to design different chiplets and combine them to serve different functions, including logic, memory, RF, analog, and connectivity.

These combined integrations create more efficiency in the design and manufacturing processes of new chiplets. Additionally, it allows manufacturers to use older, less innovative processes.

Hybrid Bonding and High-Density Interconnects

The other technology being utilized in advanced semiconductor packaging is hybrid bonding. This process creates direct bonding interfaces to make extremely close connections.

This technology can highly benefit modern memory systems due to the reduced power loss in the signals and the high density of interconnects.

High-speed data transfer is important for a variety of advanced computing applications. Thankfully, technologies like interconnects are quickly advancing to help fulfill these necessary data transfer speeds.

Advanced Thermal Management

High speed computing means performance, and performance means power. The cooling challenges that come with high power density means better performance will, in fact, slow performance.

Improved thermal management means improved relative stability of performance and power.

Photonic Integration for High-Speed Computing

We are currently witnessing a new era in integrated photonics. The relevant industries such as AI, cloud computing, data centers, and high-speed networking will benefit the most from photonic computing.

The Advanced Packaging Technologies

There are many other interesting facets of advanced packaging, including cost.

Advanced packaging, improved performance and cost are changing the economics of manufacturing most semiconductor technologies.

Packaging Technologies Balancing Performance and Cost

Advanced interconnect solutions are helping balance performance and the economics of manufacturing.

Designing with Chiplets

Designing a large chip using a single chiplet carries many risks and decreases overall manufacturing yield. However, we can slightly mitigate this risk by using Chiplets in our designs. Different chiplets can be manufactured using different fab technologies.

Fan-Out Wafer-Level Packaging (FO-WLP) shrinks footprint and increases I/O density by using innovative package designs. Additionally, flexible designs afford electrical and performance advantages compared with some traditional packaging approaches.

Co-Packaged Optics (CPO) allows the positioning of optical elements proximal to electronic processing and switching elements. This can reduce the power consumed for high-speed data transmission and satisfy the bandwidth demand of AI and high-performance computing.

Substrate-Less Packaging

Packaging materials and structures can be removed or reduced through packaging approaches. This would result in lower manufacturing costs. However, this approach is specific to a given packaging architecture and application.

Wafer-Level Chip Scale Packaging (WLCSP) provides a solution for packing integration at wafer level. This can allow for simplification of packaging and reduce the size of individual packages while increasing production throughput.

Finding the Optimal Balance Between Performance and Cost

Advanced Packaging technologies don't offer a one-size-fits-all solution for all semiconductor applications. Each technology includes a blend of performance, cost, manufacturing complexity, thermal requirements, and scalability.

It is clear that the design, process, and performance of packaging integrated as part of the chip will continue to be a focus of semiconductor manufacturing. This will allow AI, high-performance computing, and data-intensive services to continue to grow while greatly reducing the reliance of delivering higher performance transistors.