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Date: 2nd Nov 2010
Xilinx leads the industry in semiconductor
chip stacking on Silicon layer
When the semiconductor industry is heading towards the
final climb to hit the wall in taking the present semiconductor
chip making technology to its last stop, some of the chip
vendors who rely on selling-point of complexity and density
of logic elements in their semiconductor devices started
finding alternate ways to continue packing more logic elements
in smaller space. The way out is stacking of multiple chips
in a single package, a common sense solution.
FPGA industry is highly driven by the growth in density
of logic elements in their devices, so they are leading
the industry in adopting latest nodes in manufacturing FPGAs.
But due to the tough challenges in moving to deeper nodes,
companies started exploring alternate avenues to increase
the density, FPGA maker Xilinx has shown a product where
the monolithic FPGA chips are placed one next to the other
on a silicon base material acting like a micro-PCB. The
interconnecting silicon base material is called silicon
interposer with through-silicon vias. To get better idea
have a look at this picture below. The connection between
monolithic chips are made through 200 -300 micron length
connectors created on silicon interposers and are contacting
the monolithic chips via copper metal based micro-bumps.
The advantages of such stacking of chips one next to the
other is same as Moore's law benefits. The benefits include
save in space, increase in bandwidth but not much on power
consumption but surely the end-user finds this more time
and money saving along with performance improvements.
For the end-user, the stacked multi FPGA device is just
like single monolithic FPGA chip. Same software and tools
can be used for stacked FPGA device. The telecom and ASIC
chip developers who use multiple number of FPGAs on a single
PCB are the immediate customers, Xilinx is targeting.
The fab partner for Xilinx to achieve this kind of a semi
tech-breakthrough is TSMC. TSMC has mastered this technology
ahead of others. TSMC is delivering Xilinx the 28nm monolithic
chips and the silicon interposer. Amkor Technology is doing
the final assembly and packaging of stacked silicon. The
package substrate is provided by the Ibiden.
This is just the start of semiconductor packaging companies
moving into the domain of system-in-package service area,
taking the revenue pie from complex PCB board makers but
for a better cause.
Can we call this tech "Internetworked Chips in a Package"?
or "Internetworked Chips on a Silicon die"?
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