Panel-Level Packaging’s Second Wave Meets Engineering Reality


Key Takeaways Panel-level packaging is arriving not because the engineering is ready, but because wafer-level economics are breaking down. Glass improves the warpage and dimensional stability problems of organic substrates but introduces a different class of failure modes that require materials solutions, not process adjustments. The central challenges of panel-level processing are m... » read more

Beating The Heat In 3D Packages


Key Takeaways: Thermal management is a central design constraint, requiring early, thorough planning. Accurate thermal simulation requires AI-driven adaptive meshing and real-world validation. Innovative STCO strategies can drastically reduce GPU peak temperature. As HPC and AI accelerators push power densities to 1kW and beyond, the heat generated by rapidly switching tran... » read more

Quantifying The Impact Of Gravity On Strip Warpage Across Assembly Stages


The mechanical behavior of electronic packages is an important consideration at each stage of the assembly process. Many packages are assembled in strip format, making strip warpage a critical challenge for manufacturability and yield. Accurate simulations for strip warpage are an effective tool to determine what factors cause large warpages and to explore solutions before assembly. In these si... » read more

Advanced Packaging Limits Come Into Focus


Key Takeaways: Packaging is now a performance variable. Substrate, bonding, and process sequence determine what can be built at scale. Warpage underlies most advanced packaging failures and gets harder to control as package sizes grow. Every proposed solution, such as glass, panel processing, and backside power, solves one problem while creating another. Moore's Law has shif... » read more

Mitigating Warpage In Multi-Chiplet Systems


Warpage of dies, redistribution layers, and interposers is a growing problem in multi-chiplet packages, and it can have a dramatic impact on the behavior and reliability of these devices. Multiple factors contribute to warpage, including larger chip sizes, severe thinning of the silicon substrate, temporary bonding and debonding processes, and scaling of bump pitch and size. Each of these ca... » read more

Glass Substrates Gain Momentum


As a package substrate, the benefits of glass are substantial. It's extremely flat with lower thermal expansion than organic substrates, which simplifies lithography. And that's just for starters. Warpage, a growing problem for multichip packages, is greatly reduced. Chips can be hybrid bonded to redistribution layer pads on glass. And relative to organic-core substrates, glass provides very... » read more

Critical Challenges and Opportunities Related to Polymer-Based Materials in Semiconductor Packaging (NIST, NC State, NREL et al)


A new technical paper titled "Material Needs and Measurement Challenges for Advanced Semiconductor Packaging: Understanding the Soft Side of Science" was published by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, North Carolina State University, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, ASE, Intel, Innocentrix, and Binghamton University. Abstract "This Perspective builds up... » read more

Challenges In Stacking HBM


AI data centers are pushing for higher density in high-bandwidth memory. Today, the maximum number of layers that can be stacked is 8, but that increases to as many as 24 layers by 2030. The big challenge will be in the interconnects, and making sure the microbumps align. At 16 layers, the bump pitch will be less than 10 microns, and the dies will be thinner. Damon Tsai, head of product marketi... » read more

The Rise Of Panel-Level Packaging


An insatiable demand for logic to memory integration for AI and high-performance computing is driving progress toward very large-format packages, which are expected to approach 10 times the maximum reticle size in the next few years. These assemblies are best developed using fan-out panel-level packaging, replacing today’s wafer carrier with a panel. Fan-out packaging enables substantially... » read more

Thermo-Mechanical Stress On Active Chiplets In A 3D-IC Heterogeneous Package Assembly


The move to heterogeneous multi-chip/chiplet products improves yield, performance and modularity while reducing power and overall product footprint. However, this shift to heterogeneous assembly also introduces new complexities that can influence chip warpage and circuit behavior due to thermo-mechanical stress impacts. In heterogeneous 3D IC architectures, the interaction between the chips ... » read more

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