Intel is making progress on a handy new material for building even bigger computer chips: glass

pcgamer.com:

With the growing need for computational power and performance, processors are getting bigger—much bigger. Even some of today's gaming graphics cards push the boundaries of a small package, but they're relatively small-fry next to AI accelerators and supercomputer chips. From here on out, it's all about cramming more and more stuff—chiplets, memory, interconnects—onto a single processor. But there are limits to what's possible.

The limits aren't just in how much you can stuff into a single silicon chip—that's a problem that cutting-edge process nodes, chiplets, and interconnects try to solve. There's also what you put those silicon chips onto afterwards. This is called the substrate, and it's what allows the silicon chip to communicate with a motherboard. In the case of some chiplet-based processors, the substrate also acts as a way for the chip to communicate to other parts of itself.

For many years, these have been made using organic materials. Before that, ceramic was used. Long before that, in the early days of computing, a lead frame was used. As the need for more computing power grows, so does the need for a substrate that can handle all the connections and density required for bigger, better chips.

At some point in the future, organic substrates might not cut it. One reason why is that chiplet processors require lots of bandwidth to operate effectively, and that means lots of interconnects with lots of individual wires running through a substrate (depending on how they're hooked together). Another is that lots of chiplets stuffed inside a single package require lots of power and lots of space, and trying to keep these things finely balanced with your performance needs is tricky. At some point, organic substrates