Cost Evaluation of Three-Dimensional Many-Core Processors

Merits of Three-Dimensional (3D) integration offer a technology that meet the requirements of the current trend in many-core processors. However, cost is always the dominant factor of adoption of a new technology. After introduction of a fabrication cost model, 2D, homogeneous 3D and heterogeneous 3D architectures are implemented in eight designs. The fabrication costs of these designs are evaluated and a conclusion is drawn that when the number of gates is relatively small, 2D implementations are recommendable, however, when the number of gates is large, 3D implementations are more and more cost-efficient than the 2D baseline with the increase of gates.