3D processing technology and its impact on iA32 microprocessors

This short paper explores an implementation of a new technology called 3D die stacking and describes research activity at Intel. 3D die stacking is the bonding of two die either face-to-face or face-to-back in order to construct the 3D structure. In this work, a face-to-face bonding is utilized because it yields a higher density die-to-die inter-connect than is possible with face-to-back. With sufficiently dense die-to-die interconnect devices as complex as an iA32 microprocessor can be repartitioned or split between two die in order to simultaneously improve performance and power. The 3D structure of this emerging technology is examined and applied in this paper to a real x86 deeply pipelined high performance microprocessor. In this initial study, it is shown that a 3D implementation can potentially improve the performance by 15% while improving power by 15%.