Building Chips Like LEGO

MattSparkes writes "It seems that 3D silicon chips, allowing designers to fit more components into a smaller space, could soon be made far easier to create with a little inspiration from a classic children's toy. "Silicon wafers covered with matching patterns of Lego-like teeth and holes could aid the development of 3D electronics, say UK researchers." Crucially, this technique can make use of existing machinery."

Patents?

[phil-trick]

Well, Lego (TM) could be on to a nice earner with this one....

Coooling

[LiquidCoooled]

I hope the central portions of these chips have enough space to allow cooling to be achieved.

If the stack is open, then could the cooling actually be better than a single over the top method.
This could work like the fins inside double layered home radiators.

Re:Coooling

[arachnoprobe]

<blockquote>I hope the central portions of these chips have enough space to allow cooling to be achieved.</blockquote>

One could use special cooling-building blocks. These would even be placed right next to the most-heat producing parts of the overall system and enhance the overall cooling effect.

Low power components

[Calinous]

You could stack some low power components for this - while current performance microprocessors won't be made this way (too much power to dissipate), there are plenty of other microelectronics which uses power in the hundreds of milliwatts range. These, you could stack 10 high.
      Also, this could reduce the cost even more in the low cost market - instead of needing a PCB with soldered connections, just put all the components on top each other.

This reminded me of something...

[oskard]

http://home.hawaii.rr.com/chowfamily/lego/ [rr.com]

Re:Low power components

[stevesliva]

while current performance microprocessors won't be made this way (too much power to dissipate), there are plenty of other microelectronics which uses power in the hundreds of milliwatts range. These, you could stack 10 high.

Given that current Intel dice appear to be about 50% cache, it would be nice to be able to slice the cache off and put it under the processor. Might be able to make the access path from the different memory banks more symmetric. Or, since DRAM and flash processes are tailored differently than logic processes, you could replace the SRAM cache with DRAM or flash from wafers processed entirely differently than the processor wafers.

a benifit beond the obvius

[ZivZoolander]

sure better configurations could be made by stacking, but there is a manufactoring benifit that would reduce the costs of making chips by a very large factor. From what i remember from a tour in national semi. I was told that on a waffer of silicon they would etch several hundred numebr of chips, of which a certin precentage of of chips will have a defect(which are detected by laser optical scanners), due to the qty of transisotrs they are trying to squeeze in a square inch. so if one transistor is bad they just lost the entire chip for that transitor. (and if to many chips are lost they just toss the whole waffer) with the stacking method you dont have to make an the entire chip on the same peice of silicon. now you can partition the chip onto two seperate dyes then "lego" assemble working halfs. you could see a yeild increase as much as 25% depending on sition(if not more) because your only tossing defective partitions. thus reducing overal costs (probably enough to offset the amount to change to the lego method)

Re:Patents?

[sunderland56]

Never mind the patents - Lego is a trademark. The Danish toy manufacturer very strongly defends that trademark.

If you have silicon chips that fit together like little plastic children's toy blocks, that's perfectly fine. But if you mention the word Lego - even in internal company documents - you'll have a swarm of lawyers knocking at your door. (Yes, this has happened before).

Heathkit

[sharp-bang]

When I was a lad, Heathkit marketed an educational analog circuit-building kit wherein the circuit elements (resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc.) were encased in Lego-like bricks and connected on a Lego-like board instead of a breadboard. It was great fun - my brother and I built every circuit in the book, and then some - but unfortunately the kit interoperated a little too well, using the exact same dot-matrix as real Legos. We could sanp real Legos right into the circuits. The kit came off the market very quickly and my understanding is that the settlement with Lego contributed to Heathkit's eventual demise. Oh well.

(If anyone out there has the kit and wants to sell it, drop me a line.)