Topic: Chip designs that could impact Bitcoin: 3D stacking - page 2. (Read 3564 times)

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.

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.

"Multiplier" implies an output greater than the sum of the inputs, which is impossible. Perhaps it is just a misnomer.

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.

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.

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.