3-D integration and the limits of silicon computation

The intrinsic computational efficiency (ICE) of silicon defines the upper limit of the amount of computation within a given technology and power envelope. The effective computational efficiency (ECE) and the effective computational density (ECD) of silicon, by taking computation, memory and communication into account, offer a more realistic upper bound for computation of a given technology. Among other factors, they consider how distributed the memory is, how much area is occupied by computation, memory and interconnect, and the geometric properties of 3-D stacked technology with through silicon vias (TSV) as vertical links. We use the ECE and ECD to study the limits of performance under different memory distribution, power, thermal and cost constraints for various 2-D and 3-D topologies, in current and future technology nodes.