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You Could Fry an Egg!

Posted October 04, 2009 7:57 AM

Increasing complexity in semiconductor devices means that they consume ever more power and dissipate ever more heat. Heat sinks, fans, and other cooling mechanisms only delay the inevitable. Several techniques have been suggested that will help to break that cycle — multicore processors that give greater performance at a lower speed, bare die on a silicon substrate, and nanocircuitry made from DNA, to name a few. How will you reduce power consumption in your next-generation devices? How quickly will your product mix shift toward these new designs? How will you recoup your development costs amid the commodity-level price patterns of electronic products?

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Power-User

Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Illinois, USA
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Good Answers: 2
#1

Re: You Could Fry an Egg!

10/07/2009 6:53 PM

We're working with 3D circuits, using short vertical interconnects to replace long across-the-die wires. Also, integrating multiple layers into a single IC eliminates the ESD devices that would otherwise be required. In a normal 2D device, a great deal of energy is spent pushing signals off-chip and then pulling them onto the next chip. If the chips are integrated into a single, vertical SoC-type stack, that energy is saved.

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