News 3D CPUs to speed computing

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/12/07/3d_cpus_to_speed_computing/1

The Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore and flash memory maker, Fujio Masouka, are claiming huge increases in processing power by making processors in 3D.

 

I feel the heatsinks for these would be interesting.

 

need for speed of course............

 

That was my first thought
Was also thinking how the socket would be, 6 sided socket connection, with channels for cooling?

 

picture needing enough room for 5 tuniq towers. one for each side. maybe a mini version of each...

 

Haha.. I read article and was trying to figure out how it would work in any manner of high efficiency

 

Does this mean we might be getting Processors that are spears with wire jacks on them?

 

The Allspark....

 

Providing that the processors aren't hugely 3D, I see know reason why the cooling would have to change much. After all, current processors are multi layered, and these new ones should be more power efficient. Though I have to admit, the mental image of a processor set up like a mini nuclear reactor with cooling running through it is quite cool...

 

It won't last long, we'll find something even better in 10 years. All we need is a giant to take a step forward.

 

the processor isn't 3D....... (i know i can't take a joke)

they basically says the gates can be overlapped, so opposed to traditional 1 layer of transistors, they can now have multi-layered, so have multiple times the original building space, thus 100MB cache on a CPU may become possible with the current manufacturing technology.

 

if intel or amd don't pick this up i bet via or any other small cpu maker will pinch this technology and become a serious cpu maker rapist....
imagine a cell processor with this, or IBM snatching this and making God like cpus...

 

I read the Intel tech on this about 3 or 4 years ago. It was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now. There is no way the heat would be dissipated fast enough.

 

somebody better get out and patent the trademark, "cinderblock" or something... it almost seems like an obvious name for a 3d cpu. "The Cinderblock Tephra -- with pyroclastic flow technology!"


(Tephra is air-fall material produced by a volcanic eruption regardless of composition or fragment size. Tephra is typically rhyolitic in composition as most explosive volcanoes are the product of the more viscous felsic or high silica magmas.)

 

Unless I completely missed the boat, the rest of you have. The article isn't (primarily?) about stacking transistors on top of each other, its about changing their functional orientation. At present, the structure of a transistor is a three dimensional mass of columns and other micro-silicon based structures that have varying electrical properties that allow for them to function as the transistors that make up logic circuits. So far as I can tell, all they are doing is changing the basic orientation so that instead of the silicate layers needed to make the transistors being stacked on top of each other, they're piled next to each other, with the "wires" following the typical design methods of today's processors.

Or am I horribly horribly wrong?

 

I'm baffled how chipmakers didn't come up with and apply this before... I had an idea exactly like this (staggered vertical arrangement of transistors) to reduce die size as transistor counts began to increase dramatically around the the time of K8. I find die size to be particularly important for video cards rather than processors as they have not yet adopted widespread use of multiple graphics cores on one card rather than one gigantic and powerful one. Besides, transistor size isn't getting smaller as quick as it used to, so this sort of arrangement of transistors will have to be adopted soon enough.

 

I agree, I think heat would be a serious bottleneck for this technology. I think that however you increase speed, you're going to increase temperature and this is already the biggest limiting factor.

 

ehm....

 

I have a need for speed and also a need to pay the bills.

Sadly those two can't exist together so I'll go and cry in the corner now