The developing trend in the IC manufacturing field is to increase the wafer diameter, decrease the wafer substrate thickness and decrease the semiconductor manufacturing process technology. As the semiconductor manufacturing process technology decrease to 5 nm, the requirement of wafer substrate quality of single crystal silicon is higher and higher. Slicing is the first machining process in chip substrate wafer manufacturing, and the diamond wire saw slicing is the main technology for the large size single crystal silicon slicing. In this paper, the development prospects and challenges of diamond wire saw slicing technology are introduced. The material removal mechanism of diamond wire saw slicing based on the single crystal silicon scratching and the 3D morphology modeling technology of electroplated diamond wire saw are presented. The mechanism of sliced wafer surface generation and crack damage are summarized. The technological measures of low crack damage slicing of single crystal silicon are prospected. The development trend of single crystal silicon slicing technology is pointed out. It is of great significance to the development of IC manufacturing technology.