Marvell Shows Off Advanced Glass Packaging

Marvell was showing off their packaging prowess at the most recent Analyst Day. SemiAccurate spotted a pretty advanced glass package at the show and liked what we saw

Glass packaging is nothing new, Intel was the first to show it off publicly at Innovation in 2022, and has shown it several times since. At their Foundry event in early 2025 they had some pretty advanced devices on display but their self-defeating policy on pictures meant no publicity from SemiAccurate. Since the first showing there has been a lot of talk from other players on the tech as well, but Marvell was the first to be what we consider open about things.

Note the size of the pen

If you look at the above picture, the first thing you see is the coarse weave of the tablecloth. Jokes aside, this is a pretty huge package, glass of course, with a claim of going as far as 14x reticle size. The package pictured above is nowhere that large but it is still a multiple of the current ~800mm^2 reticle size. More importantly it is very thin, has high planarity, is easy to make TSVs through, and can be backlit with blinky LEDs just like the underside of your car! That too was a joke but you can actually do it. Please don’t though.

Given the state of the package shown to us at Analyst Day, Marvell is pretty close to putting glass packaging into production. In theory it should allow much larger 2.5D/3D/3.5D packages with much tighter bump pitches. The planarity and surface smoothness over organic packages should also equate to higher yields and better reliability but lets see how it works out in practice. We are hopeful on this front but as always, time will tell for everyone using this tech.

From there the ease of via creation, ability to mount things to the underside, and added potential for package cooling will allow for much greater flexibility in chiplet based devices. This is the long way of saying that Marvell is right there in the mix for the next generation of advanced packaging, bridging the gap between organic packages and interposers. We can’t wait to see the devices that come out of this tech.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate