Intel Sunny Cove next generation architecture unveiled

[DanceswithUnix]

FTFY.



GN sat down with David Kanter to talk about the 3D stacking and the heat issues surrounding it in this video, Intel seem fairly confident a lot of the issues can be worked around with good design.

Silicon is implied with "interposer", I don't know any cheaper method of getting that connection density. EMIB is silicon as well, just not under the entire main die to get costs down.

I'm sure Intel can nail the heat issues well enough to make valid products, but fundamentally if you add heat underneath your CPU then hotspots will get hotter so you have to slow it down. Perhaps that is why they are talking about making the CPU wider so they can drop the clock speeds.

I found the cpu block diagram quite hard to squint at, but notice there are 4 Atom cores and 1 large core? If that is any sort of big.LITTLE style arrangement then the 1 core would need to be 4 thread to make the thread migration work. But then most people these days seem to allow all cores to operate at once, so perhaps Intel are just hoping that Microsoft can get their thread management to work on an asymmetric platform.

[Corky34]

Silicon is implied with "interposer", I don't know any cheaper method of getting that connection density. EMIB is silicon as well, just not under the entire main die to get costs down.

For me personally it's not as what people typically call a substrate is an interposer, i know we've discussed this before so won't labor the point but an interposer is placed or insert between one thing and another, the word is derived from the Latin word interponere.

I can't really take a stab at a cheaper method of getting that connection density as IDK what sort of density we're talking about, if we're talking about the sort of density within organic interposer then that's already as cheap as it gets, it's nothing more than 'dumb' way of connecting one thing to another after all.

However that's not what a silicon interposers job is, the reason you'd want to use a silicon interposer over a organic one is because you can include logic circuitry within that layer.

Like i said an interposer is just something placed between something, you can either use a fan-out interposer, a more advanced high density interposer to connect chiplets like Ryzen/Epic, or a silicon interposer if you want to include some logic circuitry and go even denser.

[Tabbykatze]

Graphene Interposers, woo!

[DanceswithUnix]

However that's not what a silicon interposers job is, the reason you'd want to use a silicon interposer over a organic one is because you can include logic circuitry within that layer.

Silicon interposers are only metal layers, they do not contain any logic. That's what makes them cheap.

You use silicon because:

1/ You can deposit metal layers at the same density as the die you are bonding on it allowing micro bumps
2/ The silicon will thermally expand at the same rate as the bonded die making it structurally sound.
3/ By only doing a few top metal layers, you don't need many exposures so you avoid most of the costs of making logic circuits
4/ It uses existing fab technology

An organic interposer makes zero sense, because you are going onto an organic substrate with the same properties so you just do whatever is needed there and cut out the interposer.

Edit: If you include logic on your base silicon, it becomes a logic die and you would call it 3D stacking, not 2.5D.

Graphene Interposers, woo!

Now if they could get that to work that would be interesting, it could wick heat away really fast as well as provide contacts

[Corky34]

Silicon interposers are only metal layers, they do not contain any logic. That's what makes them cheap.

You use silicon because:

1/ You can deposit metal layers at the same density as the die you are bonding on it allowing micro bumps
2/ The silicon will thermally expand at the same rate as the bonded die making it structurally sound.
3/ By only doing a few top metal layers, you don't need many exposures so you avoid most of the costs of making logic circuits
4/ It uses existing fab technology

An organic interposer makes zero sense, because you are going onto an organic substrate with the same properties so you just do whatever is needed there and cut out the interposer.

Edit: If you include logic on your base silicon, it becomes a logic die and you would call it 3D stacking, not 2.5D.

It seems like you're talking about passive silicon interposers and while they're certainly the most common you also get active silicon interposers.

Organic interposers are what most (all?) modern CPUs use, we only refer to them as substrates because there the bottom most interposers, in modern CPUs they're typically fan-out interposers. (Linky).

What is an interposer?

Interposers are substrates that are used to attach components as an intermediate step to directly attaching to the main/motherboard. The interposer then becomes the new package for attaching onto the circuit board. This substrate can be made from a wide range of materials, including FR4, Polyimide, Rogers, Getek and Stablcor.

[outwar6010]

The guy in the second pic looks like ian beale