Arifur Chowdhury is an engineer at Intel Foundry specializing in advanced packaging solutions. Co-authors Jaclyn Avallone, Bamidele D. Falola, Taylor Gaines, Haowen Liu, Peng Li, Sergio A. Chan Arguedas, and Aravindha R. Antoniswamy are engineers working on thermal management and packaging technologies.
Highlights
- Intel Foundry engineers researched a new disaggregated approach that separates complex heat spreaders into simpler parts, making advanced chip packaging more cost effective and easier to manufacture.
- This innovative assembly method can reduce package warping by up to 30% and reduce thermal interface material voids by 25%, leading to better cooling for high-power computer chips.¹
- The technique enables the production of extra-large chip packages that would otherwise be impossible or prohibitively expensive to manufacture using traditional methods.
A research team of Intel Foundry engineers developed a novel approach for manufacturing integrated heat spreaders (IHS) that addresses a critical challenge in advanced chip packaging: how to cool increasingly larger chip packages while keeping manufacturing costs manageable. Presented in a research paper at the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC 2025), this innovative method breaks down complex, single-piece heat spreaders into simpler parts that can be assembled using standard manufacturing processes. Using optimized adhesives, a flat plate, and improved stiffener and heat spreader attach flows, the disaggregated approach enables better package coplanarity and higher thermal interface material (TIM) thermal performance.
Keeping package substrates flat at higher temperatures improves reliability and yield. The method has the potential to reduce package warping by up to 30%. The research team also discovered that assembly order significantly impacts performance — attaching stiffeners before installing the processor chip can reduce TIM voids by 25%, leading to better heat transfer.¹ This process could potentially enable semiconductor manufacturers to produce larger, more powerful processors without prohibitive cooling costs, benefiting industries from automotive to aerospace that rely on advanced chips for autonomous systems and electric vehicle controls.
The Heat Spreader Manufacturing Challenge
High-performance processors such as CPUs and GPUs generate tremendous amounts of heat that must be efficiently channeled away to prevent performance throttling and component failure. Heat spreaders, which are metal components that sit on top of processors to distribute thermal energy, are essential for this cooling process. However, as chip designs become more complex, particularly for extra-large packages exceeding 7,000 square millimeters, these heat spreaders require intricate stepped cavities and multiple contact areas.
Traditional stamping processes, which form metal components using high-pressure presses, simply cannot generate the enormous tonnages required for these complex shapes. The problem becomes exponentially more difficult as package sizes increase because what works for smaller chips often fails when scaled up. This manufacturing bottleneck forces companies to choose between expensive alternatives such as CNC machining, which can cost three to five times more and create supply chain delays, or eliminating advanced chip designs altogether. The result is a significant constraint on the development of next-generation processors needed for AI, data centers, and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.
A Novel Approach to Complex Assembly
In traditional semiconductor packaging, heat spreaders are typically single, monolithic pieces of metal that must be precisely shaped to fit over complex chip arrangements. The disaggregated approach instead uses separate pieces of material that are joined together during the packaging process.
Figure 1. Comparison showing (a) traditional single-piece integrated heat spreader versus (b) multi-piece integrated heat spreader using the disaggregated approach.
This approach works by taking advantage of existing packaging assembly lines, where components are already attached in sequence. As shown in Figure 1, the flat plates provide the primary heat spreading surface, while stiffeners add structural support for package flatness and create the necessary cavity shapes for different chip architectures. Each component can be manufactured using conventional stamping processes, eliminating the need for specialized high-tonnage equipment or expensive machining operations.
Timing Makes All the Difference
The research revealed that the sequence of assembly steps impacts both the structural integrity and thermal performance of the final package. Through systematic testing, the team discovered that attaching stiffeners before installing the processor chip, rather than after, produces better results across multiple performance metrics.
Figure 2. Package shape comparison showing improved IHS coplanarity when stiffeners are attached before die attachment (scenario 1) versus after die attachment (scenario 2).
Package coplanarity, which is a measure of how flat and even the surface remains, improved by 7% when stiffeners were attached early in the process. More importantly, this better structural foundation led to a 25% reduction in thermal interface material voids, the tiny air gaps that can severely impact heat transfer between the processor and heat spreader.¹ These voids act like thermal barriers, forcing heat to find alternate pathways and reducing cooling efficiency.
What's Next for Advanced Chip Cooling
Looking ahead, Intel Foundry engineers are exploring how this approach can be adapted for even more specialized cooling solutions, including high-conductivity metal composite heat spreaders and integration with liquid cooling systems. The modular nature of disaggregated assembly makes it particularly well-suited for the rapidly evolving landscape of processor architectures, where different applications require distinct thermal solutions. As processors continue to push the boundaries of performance and power consumption, evolving manufacturing techniques will be essential for keeping pace with the cooling demands of next-generation computing technologies.
If you are interested in learning more about cooling solutions at Intel Foundry, please reach out to us at foundry.contact@intel.com.
Endnotes
1. “A novel disaggregated approach of assembling integrated heat spreader for advanced packages,” IEEE Xplore, June 2025.