IBM, 3M Team To Glue Together Silicon "Bricks" 81
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."
Lego, huh? (Score:2)
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remember the CPU chip for the Terminators? it was more brick-like than chip-like...
hmmmm
The Itanium I ?
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I remember a time when cellphones looked like bricks.
If in the future our processors will look like bricks what will our cellphones look like?
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
Heat already a consideration in stack ... (Score:2)
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.
The article indicates that heat is already a primary concern. 3M's role in the endeavor is to develop adhesives with good thermal conductivity.
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Three-dimensional integrated circuit (Score:3)
"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 coorre
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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.
Eventually the 'bricks' will end up with shapes that has the best heat transfer properties, e.g. a 'ring' shaped cpu dipped in cooling liquid.
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Been there, done that... (Score:2)
1) "Standard" solution is to interleave copper fins between chiplets to take heat out -- and yes, it has been major problem for 3D integration.
2) Of course it's Intel and 3M, but do not think that this is new at all -- at my previous place of employment (6 years ago) we have been working with these guys: http://www.irvine-sensors.com/r_and_d.html#Neo-Stack [irvine-sensors.com] -- and they have this technology for quite some time before that.
Interesting tidbit I've heard from their CTO (I think): if you take a full height rack
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The word is titbit. Tit
The internet [google.com] says that both [google.com] are acceptable.
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The word is titbit. Tit
The internet [google.com] says that both [google.com] are acceptable.
Titbit's a lot funnier though, unless you're one of those people who says UR-a-nus instead of Ur-A-nus
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I always wonder why especially the american "english speakers" liek it so much to pronounce foreign words completely wrong.
After all it can't be so hard to figure how Uranus is ment to be spoken. Hint: in the word "look" the doubl eo is spoken like a european U so Uranus is spoken OO-ranÃos (the second oo/u at the and of the word is shorter than the starting one.)
I really wonder if the old gods are gone because everyone speakes/pronounces their names wrong ;D
Zeus is not spoken/pronounced Zoos ... but I
Interference? (Score:2)
Copper plates between chips should take care of (most) of it as well!
Interference? Yes, if you are attempting a multi-GHz design, you better take care of your impedances and groundplanes, granted... You would have to do it in any case though.
Of course Intel and 3M can come up with something slick, but just making heat-transferring glue might (or might not!) be a deal-breaking situation. I just wanted to point this /. crowd to some prior art that I happened to know about, and that is out in the open. I bet s
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The word is titbit. Tit.
Titbit is a variant of tidbit, not the other way around.
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And how about making a 3D memory chip? If you have one for backup purposes, you don't need the speed, and thus will not dissipate that much heat.
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Why is this ironic?
because it's like sunshine on a rainy day?
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I think part of that problem can be solved simply by making pathways a lot shorter.
Volume of IC's isn't so much the bottleneck as it is the result of another bottleneck; the inability to cross pathways in a single layer.
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Maybe the stack could simply include channels for cooling liquid?
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If you're using low-power efficient processors like ARMs, heat isn't really a huge issue - even going full tilt a typical SoC would draw 2.5W or so tops. Basically, passive cooling without a heatsink is more than adequate.
Stacking the memory and flash on top of the chip (commonly done today with multi-chip packaging
Cooling... (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if there are some specialty niche application guys who are just drooling at the prospect of vastly increased silicon area without more board space or interconnect hassle; but anybody who is cranking the clock, the power handling, or both, is going to find the utility of the layers at the center a bit dubious.
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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. ;)
Great (Score:1)
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Not the only one (Score:1)
I'm sure I'm one of thousands of folks thinking that how to glue together chips must be the least concern, and how to dissipate heat must be the highest?
The only thing I can think of that makes the adhesive important would be how well it holds up under heat, so maybe thats why its hard to do?
I imagine such a "brick" of silicon would probably have to have active cooling build into it, such as etched-in heat pipes or even some kind of micro fluid cooling system. Thats where the interesting stuff is happening
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The announcement says that the glue itself will be heat dissipating. That's pretty much the focus of the whole project.
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And, what, you expected me to READ the article first? Pshaw! This isn't the slashdot I know and love if you actually expect me to read the article and be informed first...
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Not at all! After all, what purpose do the comments serve if not to clarify the summary for all who skipped reading the article?
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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.
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Good point. As I recall, the fundamental advantages that Seymour Cray introduced with the Cray supercomputers were primarily about infrastructure - cooling the boards and chips, and using interconnect wiring that was all the 'exact' right length for the high speed signals. Since the wires were the same length, the propagation delay between boards could be accommodated in the logic on each board, so the individual processors could act in parallel increasing the overall clock speed. (I know this could be s
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I'm sure I'm one of thousands of folks thinking that how to glue together chips must be the least concern, and how to dissipate heat must be the highest? The only thing I can think of that makes the adhesive important would be how well it holds up under heat, so maybe thats why its hard to do?
You are correct that thousands are thinking about heat dissipation, it particular the folks at 3M who are working on this project are thinking about that. The article indicates that their primary role is to develop adhesives with the necessary heat dissipation.
Moore's Law (Score:2)
1) Moore's Law broken
2) This won't see the light of day for a LONG time
C) They are exaggerating.
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It's #2. This isn't something they've built, it's something they're aiming to build. Perhaps they have good reason to believe they'll succeed, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a vaporware initiative announcement.
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Or Moore's law will continue due exactly to this with doubling every 18 months until they hit the 1000x improvement where they will then have to look to other tech approaches to continue keeping up with Moore's law.
4 more years (Score:2)
If I understand correctly, Moore's law should hold out for another 4 years - that is we have mapped out the technology to get to chips down to 11 nanometers - it just a matter of implementing that technology - which is no small feat. After that - what?
3d chips - by gluing chips on top of each other
3d chips with different strata
quantum bits
quantum tunneling to replace current gates
etc.
If Moore's law is to continue, some new rabbits are going to have to pulled out of hats. Maybe this?
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Moore's law is ending in most of our lifetimes. When, exactly, is somewhat unclear, but the horizon is less than 40 years, at which point our single-atom transistors will be so numerous they will occupy the volume of our houses.
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Moore's law is ending in most of our lifetimes. When, exactly, is somewhat unclear, but the horizon is less than 40 years, at which point our single-atom transistors will be so numerous they will occupy the volume of our houses.
Ah, but they've got a plan for that too — they'll just start making houses bigger!
(what, you thought McMansions were just a silly affectation?!)
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You are assuming that we keep on building computers from transistors. But there are alternatives; for example, consider a mechanical adder made using benzene rings as gears. An adder made from molecular transistors would likely be far bigger.
Also, you are thinking of transistor-anal
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If we're not dealing with transistors, it's also the end of Moore's law, which is pretty explicitly about transistor density.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law [wikipedia.org]
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Hard drives are usually considered to fall under Moore's law as well, despite the growth of their capacity having little to do with increasing transistor density. Also, the increasing density of maim memory is because - or at least requires - increasing density of capacitors. And finally, Moore's law is generally used in the context of increasing device capacity, not transistor densi
Don't forget the batteries! (Score:2)
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You are repeating Khan's failure ... (Score:2)
On a more serious note we are simply repeating historical urban development. When land was plentiful we tended build out horizontally rather than vertically, I guess the building technology and materials also contributed to this (as it also apparently does in semiconductors). However when land started to become a scarce resource then we started to build vertica
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However when land started to become a scarce resource then we started to build vertically
This isn't quite right -- land is still plentiful in most countries. (take a flight across the country and look out the window to see all the empty space available!)
What's not plentiful is land that's conveniently close to the existing infrastructure goodies. There's are big business advantages to having an office in Manhattan, as opposed to Alaska, for example. I imagine it's the same on-chip.
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In the chip case is that tipping point something around fingernail size?
Vaporware? (Score:2)
Isn't this story a little vaporwarish? The companies "hope to develop" these new techniques and materials. There's no mention of an underlying discovery which the two companies might help each other commercialize. There's just this idea -- "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this? Let's look into it!" Is this actually news yet?
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It's completely vaporware, except for the fact that the two companies involved have the kind of reputation that suggests that if they think this is a good thing to invest in, they already have scientists on staff staking their careers on telling them they will reach the destination.
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You should learn to read slashdot properly.
A few Articels belwo the one we are both reading and posting in is this one: http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/07/2028255/Single-Chip-DIMM-To-Replace-Big-Sticks-of-RAM [slashdot.org]
And those guys basically do the same that IBM and 3M want to do, but with memory chips.
So how much vapour?
benefits (Score:3)
CPU cores devoted to DRM (Score:3)
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.
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Well from your fine examples we can conclude one chip will be used for DRM. How hard was that?
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A related benefit is that since they can assume that the signals never leave the chip stack, busses can be simpler and more fragile--- and faster.
Even a stack of only two wafers is of huge benefit. Today's package-on-package chips (which are two wafers surrounded by two complete external packages including BGA pads) allow mobile phones to put the memory right on top of the CPU, which reduces chip count and space. Assembly at the die level instead takes that a substantial step forward, by getting rid of th
SSD capacity (Score:2)
Looking forward to silicon brick oven pizza. (Score:2)
These things will generate some heat, no doubt.
Finally, the Scotch Processor (Score:2)
Always too hot, never too cold. (Score:1)
Find some super-thermally conductive material, punch holes through the new bricks in several places (planning ahead of time to avoid stuff like, oh, circuits), place or thread the material into the holes and do a quick compress to ensure it fills up the hole and touches the entire length. Then connect the outside part of the conductor to whatever cheaper heat sink you want. Even if the inner conductor material is expensive at least it transfers the heat outside and away from the inner core.
It would be even
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Being able to find out how is what research is for. Current chips shown to someone 40 years ago would cause this sort of reaction -> @_@
Yield, not Power (Score:1)
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MCPs or POPs? (Score:1)
Pft (Score:2)
Glue?!? Everyone knows if you want it done right you use duct tape.
Computronium v0.3? (Score:1)