3-D Data Storage, Power Delivery, and RF/Optical Transceiver—Case Studies of 3-D Integration From System Design Perspectives

Three-dimensional (3-D) integration of systems by vertically stacking and interconnecting multiple materials, technologies, and functional components offers a wide range of benefits, including speed, bandwidth and density increase, power reduction, small form factor, packaging reduction, yield and reliability increase, flexible heterogeneous integration with multifunctionality, and overall cost reduction. A new spectrum of opportunities and challenges arises for integrated system designers, which warrants rethinking and innovations from system design perspectives. By selecting three representative cases, i.e., solid-state data storage, power delivery, and hybrid radio-frequency/optical transceiver for distributed sensor networks, this paper intends to exemplify the potentials of exploiting the benefits of 3-D integration technology from system perspectives.