Intel plans to announce that its researchers have come up with a novel method for housing microprocessors that it hopes will speed development of high-performance microchips with more than a billion transistors. The company says such chips could be available in five or six years.
The method addresses a major challenge in what is known as packaging, the materials around the central silicon chip that are crucial to providing power, removing heat and connecting the microprocessor to other components of an electronic device.
Today's processors are mounted on packaging that consists of three layers. In a standard silicon microprocessor like Intel's Pentium chip, droplets of solder carry electrical current from the chip to the package. The grid of droplets, called bumps, connects to a network of tiny copper wires in the top layer of the package; the wires are routed to copper links that drop vertically through a plastic middle layer, or core.On the other side of the package core, the copper connections are networked through a third packaging layer to much larger pins. These pins, which stick out from the packaging, connect to the circuitry on a motherboard, which links the processor to other components.
Such a design can handle the 42 million transistors on today's Pentium4 chip. But chip-makers have known for years that this packaging could not handle the far denser transistor designs on the drawing boards, in part because the solder bumps could not be packed close enough, said Jim Walker, a packaging expert at Gartner Group/Dataquest in San Jose. In addition, the use of lead and other metals in the solders has been an environmental concern.
The invention Intel is announcing does away with the top layer of the package and the bumps of solder by connecting copper wiring directly from the core of the package to the processor.
The new structure, which Intel calls BBUL, for bumpless buildup layer, is thinner and lighter because the silicon chip is embedded in the packaging where the top connecting layer used to sit. Intel said the new design could operate at higher frequencies, use less power and operate more efficiently.
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