Power, Performance, Area and Cost Analysis of Memory-on-Logic Face-to-Face Bonded 3D Processor Designs

Abstract

In this paper, we present a power, performance, area and cost (PPAC) analysis for large-scale 3D processor designs based on wafer-to-wafer bonding. From the evaluation of our cost model, we investigate a typically disregarded opportunity in 3D that is area savings due to buffer savings and better routability, offering unexpected cost savings. We explore the viability of this factor with the feedback of a state-of-the-art 3D memory-on-logic implementation flow. We show how this affects the PPAC of full-chip GDS implementations of a large-scale manycore processor design. Experiments show that our memory-on-logic 3D implementation offers 7% silicon area savings, resulting in 53.5% footprint reduction. We also obtain a 40% power-performance-cost improvement compared with 2D counterparts.