From Movies to CPUs, It's a 3D World

Still reeling from the DreamWorks' 3D animation demos at the Intel Developer Forum, I stumbled across the 3D processors being developed by engineers at the Rochester Institute of Technology. According to the designers, the 3D processor is built to optimize processing functions vertically, through multiple layers of processors--much like how ordinary processors optimize functions horizontally. Consequently, synchronicity, power distribution, long-distance signaling, and the like are for the first time fully functioning in three dimensions.

"I call it a cube now, because it's not just a chip anymore," says Eby Friedman, director of the project. "This is the way computing is going to have to be done in the future. When the chips are flush against each other, they can do things you could never do with a regular 2D chip." The trick, say Friedman and Vasilis Pavlidis (co-authors of Three-dimensional Integrated Circuit Design), is to design a 3D chip where all the layers interact like a single system. Each layer could be a different processor with a different function--converting MP3 files to audio or detecting light for a digital camera, for instance. Friedman says that the 3D chip is essentially an entire circuit board folded up into a tiny package, and used inside something like an iPod could be compacted to 1/10th their current size with 10x the speed. A presentation by Friedman on 3D IC design is available here.

The 3D chip, which was manufactured at MIT, has millions of holes drilled into the insulation that separates the layers in order to allow for the myriad vertical connections between transistors in different layers.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:00 PM  Permalink