Centip3De

Abstract

Process scaling has resulted in an exponential increase of the number of transistors available to designers. Meanwhile, global interconnect has not scaled nearly as well, because global wires scale only in one dimension instead of two, resulting in fewer, high-resistance routing tracks. This paper evaluates the use of three-dimensional (3D) integration to reduce global interconnect by adding multiple layers of silicon with vertical connections between them using through-silicon vias (TSVs). Because global interconnect can be millimeters long, and silicon layers tend to be only tens of microns thick in 3D stacked processes, the power and performance gains by using vertical interconnect can be substantial. To address the thermal issues that arise with 3D integration, this paper also evaluates the use of near-threshold computing---operating the system at a supply voltage just above the threshold voltage of the transistors.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 01, 2013
Source ID
10.1145/2524713.2524725

Entities

People

  • Bharan Giridhar
  • Daeyeon Kim
  • David Blaauw
  • David Fick
  • Dennis Sylvester
  • Gregory Chen
  • Gyouho Kim
  • Matthew Fojtik
  • Michael Wieckowski
  • Nurrachman Liu
  • Ronald G. Dreslinski
  • Sangwon Seo
  • Sudhir Satpathy
  • Trevor Mudge
  • Yoonmyung Lee

Organizations

  • Arm Holdings
  • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
  • National Science Foundation
  • University of Michigan

Tags

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Integrated Circuit Design and Technology.
  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers