3-D ICs stack up design challenges

Ron Wilson, EETimes
4/20/2011 11:24 AM EDT

In an address to the GlobalPress Forum in Santa Cruz on March 29, Mentor Graphics Chairman and CEO Walden Rhines (See picture) outlined the likely evolutionary stages of 3-D IC development, from today's relatively simple stacked dice to a distant future of design in a homogeneous 3-D space. Along that path Rhines identified several points of interest.

To start at the beginning, the first patent on through-silicon via (TSV) technology, Rhines said, was granted to transistor pioneer William Shockley in 1958. From there, the idea of moving signals from the top to the bottom surface of a die by drilling a hole straight through languished until recently, when TSVs became the most popular candidate for moving signals between layers of a 3-D IC.

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