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Topic: Chip designs that could impact Bitcoin: 3D stacking - page 2. (Read 3527 times)

legendary
Activity: 1386
Merit: 1003
"Multiplier" implies an output greater than the sum of the inputs, which is impossible. Perhaps it is just a misnomer.
Nope, not a misnomer. Stellar radiation, upon striking aluminium, radiates 2-3x more than input. Nasa had an engine designed, for satellites and interplanetary observatories, that used a radiation multiplier propulsion engine (which produced 8x output), through stages I believe.

Ha.  Link please.  Maybe, just maybe, you were reading about solar sails and got most of the details wrong. 
full member
Activity: 232
Merit: 250
"Multiplier" implies an output greater than the sum of the inputs, which is impossible. Perhaps it is just a misnomer.
Nope, not a misnomer. Stellar radiation, upon striking aluminium, radiates 2-3x more than input. Nasa had an engine designed, for satellites and interplanetary observatories, that used a radiation multiplier propulsion engine (which produced 8x output), through stages I believe.
That's interesting. But what happens to the aluminium? Does it degrade over time as I expect the energy must come somewhere, ie. the chemical bonds or something.

It's not interesting, it's false.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1009
firstbits:1MinerQ
"Multiplier" implies an output greater than the sum of the inputs, which is impossible. Perhaps it is just a misnomer.
Nope, not a misnomer. Stellar radiation, upon striking aluminium, radiates 2-3x more than input. Nasa had an engine designed, for satellites and interplanetary observatories, that used a radiation multiplier propulsion engine (which produced 8x output), through stages I believe.
That's interesting. But what happens to the aluminium? Does it degrade over time as I expect the energy must come somewhere, ie. the chemical bonds or something.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Web Dev, Db Admin, Computer Technician
"Multiplier" implies an output greater than the sum of the inputs, which is impossible. Perhaps it is just a misnomer.
Nope, not a misnomer. Stellar radiation, upon striking aluminium, radiates 2-3x more than input. Nasa had an engine designed, for satellites and interplanetary observatories, that used a radiation multiplier propulsion engine (which produced 8x output), through stages I believe.
hero member
Activity: 756
Merit: 501
There is more to Bitcoin than bitcoins.
IBM Reaearch in recent years serves mostly PR function. A typical example of science hype is their "centipede" memory vaporware.
Stacking wafers certainly increases packaging density compared to PCBs. Their press release misleads readers that this somehow menas lower power, whereas in reality all it means is more cooling problems, and thereby the need for lower power. So, they word the problem in a positive way.
Stacking is not a new idea. Lots of research and real devices exist. Microfluidic cooling - evaporative or even with liquid metal alloys (eGaIn) - is not a new idea, lots of published research on that topic.
IBM simply announced in a bombastic tone that they will try and build upon this. Chances are, nothing will come out of it except for some stock price manipulation. Once in a while something real actually comes out of it, but in this case it wouldn't be anything revolutionary.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1009
firstbits:1MinerQ
IIRC The chip used for the Raspberry PI was built using a similar idea. It doesn't sound as advanced but generally similar. Broadcom mounted the dies for the GPU and RAM on top of the CPU in the same SoC package.

rjk
sr. member
Activity: 448
Merit: 250
1ngldh
"Multiplier" implies an output greater than the sum of the inputs, which is impossible. Perhaps it is just a misnomer.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Web Dev, Db Admin, Computer Technician
What if they used a different medium, do you remember the solder iron sold on TV infomercials, battery operated, instant heat, melts solder?
The tip was made out of a novel type of silicon that multiplies temperature. If you put that between the layers of the chips and apply cold temps, which would be multiplied by 10, you could get an effective thermoregulator.

Law of conservation of energy says "NO".  temp is merely a measure of thermal energy.  You can't multiply energy.  That would imply you created energy from nothing.
To calculate your thermal dynamic opinion, we would need to define the boundry of the closed system, have an advanced scientific calculator, and possess electron microscope data about the molecular structure and it's effects in stratum. (I don't think your clamp meter will be useful.)

Aluminium is an energy multiplier, they don't use it in spaceships because of this.
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
What if they used a different medium, do you remember the solder iron sold on TV infomercials, battery operated, instant heat, melts solder?
The tip was made out of a novel type of silicon that multiplies temperature. If you put that between the layers of the chips and apply cold temps, which would be multiplied by 10, you could get an effective thermoregulator.

Law of conservation of energy says "NO".  temp is merely a measure of thermal energy.  You can't multiply energy.  That would imply you created energy from nothing.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Web Dev, Db Admin, Computer Technician
That's why they teamed up with 3M, to develop thermal conductive compounds.

What if they used a different medium, do you remember the solder iron sold on TV infomercials, battery operated, instant heat, melts solder?
The tip was made out of a novel type of silicon that multiplies temperature. If you put that between the layers of the chips and apply cold temps, which would be multiplied by 10, you could get an effective thermoregulator.
hero member
Activity: 686
Merit: 564
I get the impression that chip stacking doesn't really make sense unless you need lots of high-speed interconnectivity or a really small form factor. Bitcoin mining is an embarassingly parallel problem that doesn't require much bandwidth into and out of the individual hashing cores - some of the current FPGA designs actually use standard serial links running at standard serial speeds - so there's no real reason to use stacked dies. The main problem at the moment is powering and cooling the chips, and using stacking just makes that harder to manage.
full member
Activity: 196
Merit: 100
Web Dev, Db Admin, Computer Technician
Quote
So the idea is to take components that are often separate on a system – processors, main memory, networking and other peripherals – and etch them all onto chips and then stack them up in a 3D array, rather than solder them onto a motherboard and wire them together with metal stripes in a 2D array. By going 3D, the wires between components can not only be shortened - cutting the time those components need to exchange signals and potentially requiring less energy to send a signal.

"Today's chips, including those containing 3D transistors, are in fact 2D chips that are still very flat structures," explained Bernie Meyerson, a vice president of IBM Research, in a statement announcing the partnership between Big Blue and 3M.

"Our scientists are aiming to develop materials that will allow us to package tremendous amounts of computing power into a new form factor – a silicon skyscraper. We believe we can advance the state-of-art in packaging, and create a new class of semiconductors that offer more speed and capabilities while they keep power usage low – key requirements for many manufacturers, especially for makers of tablets and smartphones."

The initial plan is to come up with a way to stack up as many as 100 chips into a tower of computing power. Over the long haul IBM wants to be able to bond stacks of complete wafers together, bonding hundreds of processors at a time.

The plan, says the IBM source, is to get it into production around the end of 2013.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/07/ibm_3m_3d_chip/

For now this is just secret sauce for IBM and 3M, but applied to GPU's or ASIC's could increase hashing power while keeping power consumption low.
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