Three-dimensional integrated circuits implementation of multiple applications emphasising manufacture reuse

The authors propose a platform-based approach called Chipsburger for three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D IC) implementation of multiple electronics systems. The authors emphasise manufacturing reuse to lower the total non-recurring engineering and mass-production cost of 3D chips for multiple applications. Given a set of applications each employing a set of IPs and needing a certain amount of mass-production volume, the author´s target 3D IC stack consists of platform dies and customised dies. Platform dies can be manufactured in large volume at low unit cost and used in multiple applications; Customised dies for individual application, on the other hand, will be smaller and easier to implement, as certain functionality has been allocated to the platform dies. The authors have developed a 3D IC cost model to evaluate platform-die configurations and compare the cost benefit of Chipsburger with that of either one 2D system-on-a-chip or 3D IC per application. The authors also develop a platform generator program for finding an optimised platform for a set of applications. Experimental results over industrial examples indicate that Chipsburger is indeed cost-effective for certain range of volume requirements.