3D chips overcome Moore's Law limitations

A REPORT SUGGESTS a number of top semiconductor manufacturers are turning to 3D-through-silicon (TSV) as a way of coping with increased price of lithography and the physical limitations of chip design.

The Taiwan Economic News said many firms don't want to use Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) tech to churn out 32 nanometre chips because the equipment is three or four times more expensive than 90 nanometre production.

Instead, they are turning to TSV tech, which the report claims offers 20 per cent power consumption reduction, and means a heap of different components can be piled on top of each other.

TSV packaging also allows the use of fast SRAM without filling the die with memory transistors - a method that chip giant Intel favours.

There's more, as our esteemed Bulgarian correspondent would say, here. µ