3d Stacked Chips

This book explains for readers how 3D chip stacks promise to increase the level of on-chip integration, and to design new heterogeneous semiconductor devices that combine chips of different integration technologies (incl. sensors) in a single package of the smallest possible size. The authors focus on heterogeneous 3D integration, addressing some of the most important challenges in this emerging technology, including contactless, optics-based, and carbon-nanotube-based 3D integration, as well as signal-integrity and thermal management issues in copper-based 3D integration. Coverage also includes the 3D heterogeneous integration of power sources, photonic devices, and non-volatile memories based on new materials systems.

Our report on 3D stacked memory technology covers the Intellectual Property (Patent) landscape of this rapidly evolving technology and monitors its various sub-domains for licensing activity. We have analyzed the IP portfolios of SanDisk, Micron, Samsung, IBM and other major players to find the focus areas of their patenting efforts. Using our proprietary patent analytics tool, LexScore™, we identify the front runners in this technology domain with strong patent portfolio quality as well as a heavy patent filing activity. Using our proprietary Licensing Heat-map framework, we also predict licensing activity trend in various technology sub domains.

Wafer-scale integration has long been the dream of system designers. Instead of chopping a wafer into a few hundred or a few thousand chips, one would just connect the circuits on the entire wafer. What an enormous capability wafer-scale integration would offer: all those millions of circuits connected by high-speed on-chip wires. Unfortunately, the best known optical systems can provide suitably ?ne resolution only over an area much smaller than a whole wafer. There is no known way to pattern a whole wafer with transistors and wires small enough for modern circuits. Statistical defects present a ?rmer barrier to wafer-scale integration. Flaws appear regularly in integrated circuits; the larger the circuit area, the more probable there is a ?aw. If such ?aws were the result only of dust one might reduce their numbers, but ?aws are also the inevitable result of small scale. Each feature on a modern integrated circuit is carved out by only a small number of photons in the lithographic process. Each transistor gets its electrical properties from only a small number of impurity atoms in its tiny area. Inevitably, the quantized nature of light and the atomic nature of matter produce statistical variations in both the number of photons de?ning each tiny shape and the number of atoms providing the electrical behavior of tiny transistors. No known way exists to eliminate such statistical variation, nor may any be possible.

The release of this second volume of CHIPS 2020 coincides with the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law, a critical year marked by the end of the nanometer roadmap and by a significantly reduced annual rise in chip performance. At the same time, we are witnessing a data explosion in the Internet, which is consuming 40% more electrical power every year, leading to fears of a major blackout of the Internet by 2020. The messages of the first CHIPS 2020, published in 2012, concerned the realization of quantum steps for improving the energy efficiency of all chip functions. With this second volume, we review these messages and amplify upon the most promising directions: ultra-low-voltage electronics, nanoscale monolithic 3D integration, relevant-data, brain- and human-vision-inspired processing, and energy harvesting for chip autonomy. The team of authors, enlarged by more world leaders in low-power, monolithic 3D, video, and Silicon brains, presents new vistas in nanoelectronics, promising Moore-like exponential growth sustainable through to the 2030s.

Three-dimensional (3D) integration of microsystems and subsystems has become essential to the future of semiconductor technology development. 3D integration requires a greater understanding of several interconnected systems stacked over each other. While this vertical growth profoundly increases the system functionality, it also exponentially increases the design complexity. Design of 3D Integrated Circuits and Systems tackles all aspects of 3D integration, including 3D circuit and system design, new processes and simulation techniques, alternative communication schemes for 3D circuits and systems, application of novel materials for 3D systems, and the thermal challenges to restrict power dissipation and improve performance of 3D systems. Containing contributions from experts in industry as well as academia, this authoritative text: Illustrates different 3D integration approaches, such as die-to-die, die-to-wafer, and wafer-to-wafer Discusses the use of interposer technology and the role of Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) Presents the latest improvements in three major fields of thermal management for multiprocessor systems-on-chip (MPSoCs) Explores ThruChip Interface (TCI), NAND flash memory stacking, and emerging applications Describes large-scale integration testing and state-of-the-art low-power testing solutions Complete with experimental results of chip-level 3D integration schemes tested at IBM and case studies on advanced complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) integration for 3D integrated circuits (ICs), Design of 3D Integrated Circuits and Systems is a practical reference that not only covers a wealth of design issues encountered in 3D integration but also demonstrates their impact on the efficiency of 3D systems.

This cutting-edge book on off-chip technologies puts the hottest breakthroughs in high-density compliant electrical interconnects, nanophotonics, and microfluidics at your fingertips, integrating the full range of mathematics, physics, and technology issues together in a single comprehensive source. You get full details on state-of-the-art I/O interconnects and packaging, including mechanically compliant I/O approaches, fabrication, and assembly, followed by the latest advances and applications in power delivery design, analysis, and modeling. The book explores interconnect structures, materials, and packages for achieving high-bandwidth off-chip electrical communication, including optical interconnects and chip-to-chip signaling approaches, and brings you up to speed on CMOS integrated optical devices, 3D integration, wafer stacking technology, and through-wafer interconnects.

Physical Design for 3D Integrated Circuits reveals how to effectively and optimally design 3D integrated circuits (ICs). It also analyzes the design tools for 3D circuits while exploiting the benefits of 3D technology. The book begins by offering an overview of physical design challenges with respect to conventional 2D circuits, and then each chapter delivers an in-depth look at a specific physical design topic. This comprehensive reference: Contains extensive coverage of the physical design of 2.5D/3D ICs and monolithic 3D ICs Supplies state-of-the-art solutions for challenges unique to 3D circuit design Features contributions from renowned experts in their respective fields Physical Design for 3D Integrated Circuits provides a single, convenient source of cutting-edge information for those pursuing 2.5D/3D technology.

The large scale integration and planar scaling of individual system chips is reaching an expensive limit. If individual chips now, and later terrabyte memory blocks, memory macros, and processing cores, can be tightly linked in optimally designed and processed small footprint vertical stacks, then performance can be increased, power reduced and cost contained. This book reviews for the electronics industry engineer, professional and student the critical areas of development for 3D vertical memory chips including: gate-all-around and junction-less nanowire memories, stacked thin film and double gate memories, terrabit vertical channel and vertical gate stacked NAND flash, large scale stacking of Resistance RAM cross-point arrays, and 2.5D/3D stacking of memory and processor chips with through-silicon-via connections now and remote links later. Key features: Presents a review of the status and trends in 3-dimensional vertical memory chip technologies. Extensively reviews advanced vertical memory chip technology and development Explores technology process routes and 3D chip integration in a single reference