A thermally-aware performance analysis of vertically integrated (3-D) processor-memory hierarchy

Three-dimensional (3-D) integrated circuits have emerged as promising candidates to overcome the interconnect bottlenecks of nanometer scale designs. While they offer several other advantages, it is expected that the benefits from this technology can potentially be off-set by thermal considerations which impact chip performance and reliability. The work presented in this paper is the first attempt to study the performance benefits of 3-D technology under the influence of such thermal constraints. Using a processor-cachememory system and carefully chosen applications encompassing different memory behaviors, the performance of 3-D architecture is compared with a conventional planar (2-D) design. It is found that the substantial increase in memory bus frequency and bus width contribute to a significant reduction in execution time with a 3-D design. It is also found that increasing the clock frequency translates into larger gains in system performance with 3-D designs than for planar 2-D ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Gian Luca Loi, Banit Agrawal, Navin Srivastava, Sheng-Chih Lin, Timothy Sherwood, Kaustav Banerjee
• Keywords: 3-D Designs, DAC 2006, Design Automation, Memory Intensive Applications, Planar 2-D Designs