As a part of their efforts to push the boundaries on the biggest manufacturable chip sizes, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is engaged on its new Chip-On-Wafer-On-Substrate-L (CoWoS-L) packaging expertise that may enable it to construct bigger Tremendous Provider interposers. Aimed on the 2025 time span, the subsequent technology of TSMC’s CoWoS expertise will enable for interposers reaching as much as six instances TSMC’s most reticle dimension, up from 3.3x for his or her present interposers. Such formidable system-in-packages (SiP) are supposed to be used by performance-hungry information heart and HPC chips, a distinct segment market that has confirmed keen to pay vital premiums to have the ability to place a number of excessive efficiency chiplets on a single bundle.
“We’re presently creating a 6x reticle dimension CoWoS-L expertise with Tremendous Provider interposer expertise,” mentioned mentioned Yujun Li, TSMC’s director of enterprise improvement who’s answerable for the foundry’s Excessive Efficiency Computing Enterprise Division, on the firm’s European Know-how Symposium 2023.
International megatrends like synthetic intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) have created demand for seemingly infinite quantities of compute horsepower, which is why corporations like AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA are constructing extraordinarily complicated processors to handle these AI and HPC purposes. One of many methods to extend compute capabilities of processors is to extend their transistor depend; and to take action effectively as of late, corporations use multi-tile chiplet designs. Intel’s spectacular, 47 tile Ponte Vecchio GPU is an efficient instance of such designs; however TSMC’s CoWoS-L packaging expertise will allow the foundry to construct Tremendous Provider interposers for much more gargantuan processors.
The theoretical EUV reticle restrict is 858mm2 (26 mm by 33 mm), so six of those masks would allow SiPs of 5148 mm2. Such a big interposer wouldn’t solely afford room for a number of massive compute chiplets, nevertheless it additionally leaves loads of room for issues like 12 stacks of HBM3 (or HBM4) reminiscence, which implies a 12288-bit reminiscence interface with bandwidth reaching as excessive as 9.8 TB/s.
“The Tremendous Provider interposer options a number of RDL layers on the entrance in addition to on the bottom of the interposer for yield and manufacturability,” defined Li. “We are able to additionally combine varied passive elements within the interpreter for efficiency. This six reticle-size CoWoS-L can be certified in 2025”
Constructing 5148 mm2 SiPs is a particularly powerful duties and we are able to solely marvel how a lot they’ll value and the way a lot their builders will cost for them. At current NVIDIA’s H100 accelerator, whose packaging spans an interposer a number of reticles in dimension, prices round $30,000. So a substantial bigger and extra highly effective chip would seemingly push costs increased nonetheless.
However paying for the price of massive processors is not going to be the one enormous investments that information heart operators might want to make. The quantity of lively silicon that 5148 mm2 SiPs can home will virtually definitely lead to a few of the most power-hungry HPC chips produced but – chips that will even want equally highly effective liquid cooling to match. To that finish, TSMC has disclosed that it has been testing on-chip liquid cooling expertise, stating that it has managed to chill down silicon packages with energy ranges as excessive as 2.6 kW. So TSMC does have some concepts in thoughts to deal with the cooling want of those excessive chips, if solely on the worth of integrating much more cutting-edge expertise.