Slashdot Mirror
IBM, 3M Team To Glue Together Silicon "Bricks"
coondoggie writes "IBM and 3M today said they will jointly develop a new line of adhesives they hope will let them make it possible to build commercial microprocessors composed of layers of up to 100 separate chips. Such stacking would allow for higher-powered servers and more advanced consumer electronics applications, the companies stated. Processors could be tightly packed with memory and networking, for example, into a 'brick' of silicon that would create a computer chip 1,000 times faster than today's fastest microprocessor enabling more powerful smartphones, tablets, computers and gaming devices."
Stacking these things is all well and good, but at what point do heat considerations become a primary concern? Lately I haven't gotten the impression that volume of ICs is our biggest bottleneck.
--
No product on any scale from chips to countries is good unless the infrastructure supports it properly. Glue is "infrastructure," not sexy, but utterly vital. A glue that permits building a Borg Cube in microchip form will permit the firm with the technology to say "Resistance is futile." and mean it.
Advantages: speed- Total execution time is based on distance the signal must travel- vertical stacking shortens distance. space- having half your motherboard used up for ram limits what you can do. If you ever want to see TB usb sticks you need this. Board space in a cellphone is very limited, with this you can multiply the number of chips on the board by 10/20/30 depending on how thin the slices are. cooling: you can etch channels on the backside before you glue to run cooling oil through.
A reference for some readers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-dimensional_integrated_circuit
"Power – Keeping a signal on-chip can reduce its power consumption by 10-100 times. Shorter wires also reduce power consumption by producing less parasitic capacitance. Reducing the power budget leads to less heat generation, extended battery life, and lower cost of operation."
"Heat – Heat building up within the stack must be dissipated. This is an inevitable issue as electrical proximity coorrelates with thermal proximity. Specific thermal hotspots must be more carefully managed."
Board space in a cellphone is very limited, with this you can multiply the number of chips on the board by 10/20/30 depending on how thin the slices are.
But how many of these chips will be used for adding functionality, as opposed to adding measures to restrict the owner of a phone from making full use of the functionality? Case in point: the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita have multicore CPUs and dedicate one core to DRM, and the Wii has an extra CPU (nicknamed "starlet") on the northbridge, again devoted to DRM.
Didn't we JUST see an article about unimolecular pumps? If they put some grooves in the silicon layers they can just use on-die liquid cooling. ;)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"