Impact of through-silicon via technology on energy consumption of 3D-integrated solid-state drive systems

Through-silicon via (TSV) technology is a useful interconnect technique for three-dimensional (3D) integrated circuits. With the TSV, a compact and low power system is achievable. In this paper, the impact of TSV on the energy consumption of 3D-integrated solid-state drives (SSDs) is analyzed, including the all NAND flash SSD, hybrid memory-type storage class memory (M-SCM)/NAND flash SSD, and all storage-type SCM (S-SCM) SSD. From the experimental results, 22%, 23%, and 30% energy consumption reductions are obtained for the all NAND flash SSD, hybrid M-SCM/NAND flash SSD, and all S-SCM, respectively, compared with the SSD system without using TSV. Further, the energy consumption reduction increases with the number of chips for all S-SCM SSD. When 8 S-SCM chips are used for the all S-SCM SSD, 75% energy consumption reduction is obtained at 1066 MHz I/O frequency. Moreover, the all NAND flash SSD write throughput saturates at 400 MHz NAND I/O frequency yet the write throughput of all S-SCM SSD increases with the S-SCM I/O frequency beyond 1066 MHz. Therefore, a 1066 MHz SCM I/O frequency is recommended for the all S-SCM SSD and 400 MHz NAND I/O frequency is recommended for all NAND flash SSD.