Intel will introduce PowerVia technology achievements at the VLSI Symposium

At the ‘Intel Accelerated: Process and Packaging Technology Online Conference’ in July 2021, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, unveiled a slew of fundamental technological innovations, stating that groundbreaking technologies like RibbonFET and PowerVia would herald the Age of Ångstrom.

RibbonFET, an implementation of the Gate All Around transistor, will serve as Intel’s first novel transistor architecture since the introduction of FinFET in 2011. This technology accelerates transistor switching speed whilst attaining a drive current analogous to a multi-fin structure, albeit in a smaller footprint. PowerVia, uniquely an Intel innovation, is the industry’s first backside power delivery network that optimizes signal transmission by obviating the need for power supply wiring on the wafer front.

Intel has announced that it will publish a new paper on the achievements of PowerVia technology at the VLSI Symposium next week. Intel maintains that test results demonstrate that PowerVia technology boasts industry-leading performance.

Intel posits that, with the assistance of this novel PowerVia power supply technology, they have achieved a revolutionary breakthrough in chip manufacturing that will disrupt the industry. In Intel’s 20A process planned for release in the first half of 2024, PowerVia technology will be introduced to address the escalating interconnect bottleneck in the scaling area, shifting power supply to the wafer’s backside, resulting in over 90% utilization rate for power transmission, among other benefits.

As Intel outlines, the development team created a chip known as ‘Blue Sky Creek’ for testing, based on the E-Core used in Meteor Lake. The results indicate that PowerVia has resolved two issues inherent in previous manufacturing methods, providing superior power transmission and signal wiring, along with a frequency increase of over 5%.

Next year, consumers will experience the manifold advantages of PowerVia via the Arrow Lake processor, manufactured with the Intel 20A process, exhibiting efficiency unprecedented in the history of Intel. The advent of PowerVia technology, Intel asserts, gives it a roughly two-year lead over its competitors in backside power supply.