Eighty-year-old Japanese f irm may be key to next-gen chip tech
ONE Japanese company that got its start making grinding wheels for machinery more than 80 years ago believes it holds the key to helping manufacturers create ever slimmer and more powerful semiconductors to power nextgeneration mobile phones and advanced computers.
Disco Corp.’s machines can grind a silicon wafer down to a near-transparent thinness and cut the tip of a hair into 35 sections. That knowhow will allow chipmakers to stack integrated circuits on top of each other in a process called 3D packaging, promising smaller chip footprints, reduced power consumption and higher bandwidth between various parts.
“Imagine having to cut a croissant cleanly in half,” Disco’s Chief Executive Officer Kazuma Sekiya said in an interview. “That takes a special kind of knife and considerable craftsmanship.”
The semiconductor industry has long relied on Moore’s Law as a model for chip-technology breakthroughs, but makers are now approaching the physical limits of their ability to cram more transistors onto silicon as leaders like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. migrate to ever-smaller nodes such as 3 nanometers. That’s prompting manufacturers to turn to solutions like 3D packaging to provide an edge. Disco’s technology has been in the making for four to five years and it’s finally ready for practical use, Sekiya said.
The small number of specialized machines Disco has already shipped have had very high gross margins, the CEO said, without providing details. Dicers are typically used toward the end of the fabrication process to cut individual chips from a wafer. Slicing more chips earlier in the process, where per-unit prices are higher, resulting in a boost for Disco’s revenues, he added, declining to give a specific timeline.
“Disco has grown at twice the semiconductor industry’s pace because of this need for precision grinding and dicing equipment,” Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd., said. “Over the last 40 years, they have worked on every kind of cutting application imaginable, so they are well positioned for this next shift to 3D integration and packaging.” —