Chip and substrate manufacturing may not be the most exhilarating topic in the world, but if it can lead to significant improvements in performance and efficiency, you better bet I’m up for it. So I’m certainly excited to hear that according to Business Korea (By Tom’s Equipment), AMD “plans to introduce glass substrates between 2025 and 2026.”
Why does this matter? Because there are many advantages to placing chips on glass substrates instead of organic substrates for chiplet-to-chiplet and chip-to-board communications. In September, we reported that Intel was already planning to apply glass substrates, which have advantages such as “enabling more chiplets in a smaller footprint, higher interconnect density, faster IO, higher power efficiency, and larger package sizes.”
In essence, glass substrates are flatter, more strong, and allow for more (and denser) interconnects to be more easily lithographically inserted. In AMD’s case, chiplet-to-chiplet and chip-to-board interconnects are part of its current core Infinity architecture. So if AMD hasn’t patented “Infinity Glass,” it probably should do so now.
According to TrendForce (By Wccftech), AMD is already “conducting performance evaluation tests on glass substrate samples from several of the world’s largest semiconductor substrate companies with the intent of bringing this advanced substrate technology into semiconductor production.” However, while AMD can evaluate samples, that doesn’t mean all semiconductor substrate companies are close to mass production.
2025 or 2026 seems very close for AMD to launch glass-based chips, but that would be in line with at least one timeline provided by a semiconductor substrate maker. Samsung is aiming (via Wccftech) will begin its own glass substrate production by 2026 and has reportedly already begun R&D. Intel has also (via Wccftech), it seems to be looking toward 2026 for mass production of the glass substrate. Perhaps AMD could expect Samsung to meet its glass quotas for the supposed initial time frame of 2025 or 2026.
Whenever glass substrates do hit the market, we can be sure that they won’t initially be available in top-of-the-line gaming processors—or any other regular desktop chips, for that matter. That’s because glass substrates currently only seem to be really beneficial in vast, multi-chip packages.
While AMD is betting on chiplet designs in its gaming processors, it will probably make more sense to bring its latest fabrication technologies to AI and HPC data centers. In AMD’s case, that will be the EPYC line, which includes more than just a few connected CCDs (chiplets) found in the desktop Zen processor. However, the next generation of EPYC processors is expected to apply regular organic substrates, so there will be a diminutive window for the 2025 or 2026 prediction to become precise.
Either way, the good news is that AMD, as the king of modular CPU designs, seems to be quickly adopting this novel manufacturing technology, which we hope will find its way into our gaming CPUs soon.
