Friday, July 7th 2023
BBCube 3D Could be the Future of Stacked DRAM
Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have developed a new type of stacked or 3D DRAM that the researchers call Bumpless Build Cube 3D or BBCube 3D, which relies on Through Silicon Vias or TSVs to connect the DRAM dies. This is a different approach to HBM which relies on micro bumps to connect the layers together and the Japanese scientists are saying that their bumpless wafer-on-wafer solution should allow not only for an easier manufacturing process, but more importantly, improved cooling, as the TSVs can channel the heat from the DRAM dies down into whatever substrate the BBCube 3D stack is finally mounted onto.
If that wasn't enough, the researchers believe that BBCube 3D will be able to deliver higher speeds than HBM courtesy of a combination of the TSVs being relatively short and "high-density signal parallelism". BBCube 3D is expected to deliver up to a 32 fold increase in bandwidth compared to DDR5 memory and a four fold increase compared to HBM2E memory, while at the same time, drawing less power. The research paper goes into a lot more details for those interested at taking a closer look at this potentially revolutionary shift in DRAM assembly. However, the question that remains unanswered is if this will end up as a real world product some time in the near future, which is all based on how manufacturable BBCube 3D memory will be.
Sources:
Tokyo Tech News, Review of Bumpless Build Cube (BBCube) Using Wafer-on-Wafer (WOW) and Chip-on-Wafer (COW) for Tera-Scale Three-Dimensional Integration (3DI), via Blocks and Files
If that wasn't enough, the researchers believe that BBCube 3D will be able to deliver higher speeds than HBM courtesy of a combination of the TSVs being relatively short and "high-density signal parallelism". BBCube 3D is expected to deliver up to a 32 fold increase in bandwidth compared to DDR5 memory and a four fold increase compared to HBM2E memory, while at the same time, drawing less power. The research paper goes into a lot more details for those interested at taking a closer look at this potentially revolutionary shift in DRAM assembly. However, the question that remains unanswered is if this will end up as a real world product some time in the near future, which is all based on how manufacturable BBCube 3D memory will be.
18 Comments on BBCube 3D Could be the Future of Stacked DRAM
It makes the stacks "unstable" because of the bumps and having single layer TSVs are not as benefitial as doing TSVs through the entire memory stack.
However, it doesn't mean that HBM couldn't copy this stacking approach in the future.
I guess the tricky part with BBCube 3D is that each layer of DRAM has to be as thin as possible from my understanding of skimming through the paper, which could lead to dificulties during production, but the rest seems pretty doable at fairly low costs.
Then again, this is a research paper, so it's possible that the researches has missed something and this simply won't be practical with today's manufacturing tools.
it will be facing HBM3 by then in reality still more options can't be bad.
Got 'em Nice-N-Smokey with voltage.
Since this is a concept still on paper I woudn't get your hopes up too high over it, esp if expecting anything like it to appear soon because this will take time just to get it to the testing stage of it.
No telling if would be as good, better or worse than described.
We already have issues w/ cold solder joints from expansion-contraction cycles; I'm concerned that we might be building tech that implicitly will fail inside a decade of normal use.
IGPU with a couple of GBs of fast memory sitting right beside it.