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Volume? Not yet...

Volume? Not yet...

Posted Apr 28, 2008 11:34 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Multicores are admission of defeat - and they are here to stay... by ekj
Parent article: Interview with Donald Knuth (InformIT)

It's hard enough dealing with the multiple layers we have on todays CPUs, making an awful LOT more layers would -not- simplify design.

Before we'll do this we'll need technology for at least two layers. Currently we are using one and only one transistor-layer in our CPUs. Sure there are talks about 7, 9 even 15 layers - but these are metalization layers - all transistors (which do actual work) are in single layer...

You can easily glue many dies together - but again, it's multicores, not bigger hot-spot...


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Volume? Not yet...

Posted Apr 28, 2008 11:56 UTC (Mon) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link]

True.

My point was just that if you're only concerned with PHYSICAL limitations, like lightspeed,
then the limit is a volume, and not an area.

I agree with you we are nowhere near being technically capable of designing and manufacturing
a true 3d cpu (one that uses the entire volume of say a 1000mm3 to do computation)

But this is a technical limitation, and one that can, atleast in principle, be overcome. And
not a physical one that asfar as we know is final -- like lightspeed.

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