Thoughts on chiplets going vertical?

[Vya Domus]

No, you can stack caches on top of processors or vice versa because they don't get that hot but if you mean stacking CPU or GPU chiplets that's out of the question at the moment.

Have tiny liquid pipes running through die layers?

Wouldn't work, you need the entire surface to be covered by something that facilitates heat transfer.

 

[InVasMani]

I wonder if NAND controllers will start adopting 3D stacking in time or not. We've seen NAND and DRAM do so, but the controller itself is facing performance and heat challenges. In theory could lower lower clocked controllers stacked could reduce power and lower heat while matching performance though.

The manufacturing costs are probably higher though not necessarily since yields on higher clocked chips must be a bit lower though probably doesn't offset the added costs and challenges of 3D stacking right now. In time it might as approach becomes more common with a lot more experience around actually doing so efficiently and more cost effectively.

On the matter of DIMM's and traces I could see consumer level boards scratching 4 DIMM solutions entirely with 1 to 2 DIMM's becoming more normal, but with more pins per DIMM to extract higher performance. The peak system capacity isn't going to be missed for like 99% of desktop consumers anyway.

 

[Panther_Seraphin]

I wonder if NAND controllers will start adopting 3D stacking in time or not. We've seen NAND and DRAM do so, but the controller itself is facing performance and heat challenges. In theory could lower lower clocked controllers stacked could reduce power and lower heat while matching performance though.

Stacked controllers no wont reduce the heat. The heat is there because we are pushing 12nm node to the limit with current controllers especically with on the fly encyption at up to 14Gbps.

These speeds are High end DDR3/Low End DDR4 equivalent speeds all on the space a 2280/22110 drive gives you.

 

[InVasMani]

There is still leakage to take into account though and at lower frequencies and voltages you have less of it. Costs with manufacturing difficulties seems like the real barrier. Beyond stacking two controllers they could just stack and separate parts of the controller design itself as well like AMD has shown.

 

[A Computer Guy]

While we could make our chips more energy efficient through better transistor designs & eventually graphene. We all have to deal with the fact that we could only make a transistor so small before making the chip big. So why not go vertical or say have layers of chiplets. Do you think this could be the way forward for chip manufacturing companies eventually? I think so as we have already seen 3D cache technology as demonstrated by AMD.

I say welcome to the era of the AMD Radeon RX Thicc XTXXX CPU with 5 layers of iGPU X3D cache but still only 24 PCIe lanes.

But as we already seen… stacked (3D) dies one on top of the other have cooling issues. How are you going to cool the bottom one and or middle ones if multi layered?
Have tiny liquid pipes running through die layers?

Too many problems arrive with this.

Tiny liquid pipes might not be a bad idea. I forgot what the fluid was called but some time ago I saw here a link and/or video of a server with liquid immersion but it was with some special expensive liquid.

 

[LabRat 891]

Tiny liquid pipes might not be a bad idea. I forgot what the fluid was called but some time ago I saw here a link and/or video of a server with liquid immersion but it was with some special expensive liquid.

Probably:

-Segregated Hydrofluoroether (HFE) compounds including Novec 7000, 7100, 7200, 7300, 7500, and 7700
-Fluoroketones (FK) compounds including Novec 649 and 774
-Fluorinert is the trademarked brand name for the line of electronics coolant PFC (perfluorinated compounds) liquids sold commercially by 3M including FC-70, FC-72, FC-75

And AFAIK, precisely what you and Zach are thinking of (I'm pretty-sure) are in-use for the most modern IBM and Sun mainframes.

Eventually,
I could see a micronized and hermetically sealed heatloop that lets an inert engineered liquid flow into geometrically-advantaged die/MCM-stacks, phase changing through the layers; potentially against convection using molecular-scale/electrical effects and/or mere vapor pressure.

Basically: We heard you liek cooling your CPU, so we put the Cooler *in* the CPU, dawg...

(3DMCM-IHS integral vapor chamber?)

 

[idkidk]

I don't really care, nor I think it's a choice down to consumers

The market it's basically a duopoly, any "weird" solution is down to enterprises/researchs showcases