IBM and 3M have announced that they're working on a new type of adhesive that they want to use to glue computer processors together into stacks. If they can make it happen, this could mean an entirely new generation of chips which are a thousand times more powerful than anything we have now.
A typical computer processor is made from a flat layer of silicon with transistors etched into it and a big fat heatsink jammed on top. Even computer chips that use "3D transistors" are still mostly flat, which means that there's a simple path to getting more transistors (and more power) onto a given volume of chip space: just build upward, creating a solid brick of processors.
Stacking chips on top of one another can vastly increase computing power, but the immediate problem is that there's no way to effectively cool any of the chips except for whichever one happens to be at the top of the stack. IBM and 3M are partnering up to solve this problem using a new type of heat-conducting adhesive to make stacked chips like a layer cake. Each layer will be separated by 3M's adhesive, which will both bond the "silicon skyscraper" (as they're calling it) together, and also carry heat away from the inside of the brick to the edges, where it can be cooled more effectively.
By stacking a hundred chips and then tying them all together with integrated memory and networking, IBM says that they'll be able to "create a computer chip 1,000 times faster than today's fastest microprocessor." Check it out in a video below.
IBM, via KurzweilAI
For the latest tech stories, follow us on Twitter at @dvice
Posts
