A Novel Methodology for Thermal Analysis & 3-Dimensional Memory Integration

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new methodology for analyzing thermal effects in 3D memory integration, addressing temperature challenges to improve reliability and performance of stacked memory chips.

Contribution

It presents a transistor-level power analysis combined with architecture-level thermal modeling for 3D memory stacks, enhancing accuracy in thermal effect prediction.

Findings

Accurate power profile extraction for 3D memory

Thermal effects significantly impact chip reliability

Modeling improves lifetime estimation of 3D memory chips

Abstract

The semiconductor industry is reaching a fascinating confluence in several evolutionary trends that will likely lead to a number of revolutionary changes in the design, implementation, scaling, and the use of computer systems. However, recently Moore's law has come to a stand-still since device scaling beyond 65 nm is not practical. 2D integration has problems like memory latency, power dissipation, and large foot-print. 3D technology comes as a solution to the problems posed by 2D integration. The utilization of 3D is limited by the problem of temperature crisis. It is important to develop an accurate power profile extraction methodology to design 3D structure. In this paper, design of 3D integration of memory is considered and hence the static power dissipation of the memory cell is analysed in transistor level and is used to accurately model the inter-layer thermal effects for 3D memory stack. Subsequently, packaging of the chip is considered and modelled using an architecture level simulator. This modelling is intended to analyse the thermal effects of 3D memory, its reliability and lifetime of the chip, with greater accuracy.