Implementing wireless communication links in 3-D ICs utilizing wide-band on-chip meandering microbump antenna

Three-dimensional integrated circuit (3-D IC) technology for improving integration density has made great progress, and its wide deployment in high performance computing systems has been envisaged during the recent years. We present a promising perspective of wireless communication links between 3-D ICs for reducing latency and overall pin count. We propose a wireless link utilizing a fully Si-compatible micro-bump antenna, and demonstrate the feasibility of using micro-bumps placed between the layers of 3-D IC as a high-efficiency, compact, and wide-bandwidth antenna. The wide-bandwidth antenna allows a highly flexible wireless link with a data capacity comparable to that of wireline link and shows high invariability over process variation.