Samsung Electro-Mechanics said it is building a glass substrate ecosystem for semiconductor chips, aiming to quickly solve related technical problems and commercialize the technology.
Currently, plastic wafers are used as substrates for semiconductor chips and are expected to be replaced by glass substrates. Glass substrates have lower warping, making it easier to achieve precise signal paths, thereby improving performance. It can also print a large number of copper channels, thereby improving power efficiency. According to reports, compared with chips using plastic substrates, chips using glass substrates will have improved performance and reduced power consumption.
Recently, Joo Hyuk, vice president of Samsung Electro-Mechanics Research Institute, said: "We plan to form an alliance with multiple suppliers and technology partners to create a semiconductor glass substrate ecosystem."
Samsung Electro-Mechanics will create an ecosystem covering equipment, materials, components and process brands and promote cooperation between them. Samsung Electro-Mechanics has been in talks with relevant companies and the ecosystem is about to start.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics' factory production line in Sejong, South Korea is expected to start a pilot in the second quarter of this year and achieve mass production after 2027. The accelerated advancement is the result of a surge in demand for artificial intelligence chips (AI).
Samsung Electro-Mechanics is reportedly in talks with Samsung Semiconductor, which is responsible for chip design (system LSI) and manufacturing (Samsung Foundry), and other global chip companies including Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics is targeting both the glass interposer (middle material) and glass core (main material) markets. In AI chips, the glass core connects the GPU with high bandwidth memory (HBM), such as chips from AMD and Nvidia.