Japanese toolmaker Disco is betting on 3D packaging for chips by stacking integrated circuits on silicon wafers of near-transparent thinness

As Moore’s Law nears its physical limits, chip makers are looking at new materials and designs to get better performance out of next-generation hardware

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 next-generation 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 know-how will allow chip makers 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.”

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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 nanometres. 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 specialised 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.

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“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.”

Some memory chips and image sensors – devices that convert light into ones and zeros – already make use of vertical integration. TSMC has said it will spend about one tenth of its US$30 billion capital expenditure budget this year on advanced packaging and masking technologies.

Sekiya’s grandfather founded the company in 1937 to cash in on demand for grinding equipment amid Japan’s pre-war military build-up. After the war, Disco’s abrasive wheels found use in grinding magnets for electricity meters and slitting fountain pen nibs. In 1974, it was tasked by the University of Tokyo with the job of cutting the moon rock brought back by the Apollo 11 mission.

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It opened its US office in 1969, a year after

Intel Corp

was founded and at the very dawn of the microchip revolution. Disco is now one of a number of little-known Japanese companies that are indispensable to semiconductor production. It controls 81 per cent of the market for grinders and 73 per cent for dicers in semiconductors, according to Nomura Securities Co.

Disco’s revenue grew 30 per cent last fiscal year to 182.9 billion yen (US$1.65 billion), while profit jumped almost 46 per cent to 53.1 billion yen. Both were at a record high, in part as manufacturers raced to boost supplies in a

global chip shortage

. Sekiya said there are still no signs of slack in demand and Disco is shopping for land in Hiroshima and Nagano prefectures to expand its factories.

“This momentum will definitely continue through the fiscal first half,” he said. “There are zero signs of a slowdown right now.”

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