Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

mashable.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 100 posts

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#51

Post by ThaddeusQuay2 »

I don't understand why TEC hasn't been somehow used to make 3D chips workable by now, even just for specialized applications where size and weight are not major concerns.

"Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux between the junction of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater, or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one side of the device to the other side against the temperature gradient (from cold to hot), with consumption of electrical energy. Such an instrument is also called a Peltier device, Peltier heat pump, solid state refrigerator, or thermoelectric cooler (TEC). The Peltier device is a heat pump: when direct current runs through it, heat is moved from one side to the other. Therefore it can be used either for heating or for cooling (refrigeration), although in practice the main application is cooling. It can also be used as a temperature controller that either heats or cools."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#52

Post by [deleted] »

tobiasu wrote: post #43
sliverstorm wrote: post #38

Let me get this straight. Today, we have trouble dissapating the heat produced by a single die. To solve this problem, we are going to stack 1000 dies, and produce 1000x as much heat. Who cares about whether the heat can travel up the column- where is the improvement in cooling technology to remove 1000x the heat from the die stack?

IBM talks about up to 100 layers, not 1000. Not all components have the same power requirements or are even powered up at the same time. Also this is IBM research. They don't need to make robust processors for the consumer market. If the CPU requires watercooling or better, IBM can do and sell that. They already have such solutions for super computers and mainframes in the field.

[deleted]

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#53

Post by wmf »

ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #51

I don't understand why TEC hasn't been somehow used to make 3D chips workable by now, even just for specialized applications where size and weight are not major concerns. "Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux between the junction of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater, or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one sid…

Peltier cooling is very inefficient; water cooling (especially with microchannels, where you could use some layers of the chip for cooling) is more efficient.

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#54

Post by wmf »

brainless wrote: post #30

The article is not very technical, but I wanted to understand: Would this enable non-CPU core to be also glued? I mean a single stack of say 12CPU layers, 12GPU layers, 8 memory layers, 2 Physics and so on... Could that be possible, then we are getting a really good overall throughput, or am I thinking wrong?

You can stack anything.

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#55

Post by pjscott »

henrymazza wrote: post #34

Typical IBM: how make processors faster? just find a way to make them burn faster. It's just turbo charge for processors.

Just putting a bunch of DRAM on the same chip as the CPU could make things faster and more energy-efficient by reducing the amount of time waiting for memory.

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#56

Post by starwed »

carbocation wrote: post #8
DrCatbox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same as always, more "value", specialization and jobs created which means more money for the rich and less money for the poor.

Would you have leveled a similar criticism against farming during the agricultural revolution?

Eh, it would actually be more reasonable in that context. Dipping into wikipedia for a quick quote:

>The shift to agricultural food production supported a denser population, which in turn supported larger sedentary communities, the accumulation of goods and tools, and specialization in diverse forms of new labor. The development of larger societies led to the development of different means of decision making and to governmental organization. Food surpluses made possible the development of a social elite who were not otherwise engaged in agriculture, industry or commerce, but dominated their communities by other means and monopolized decision-making.

(Dr Catbox's comment, though, was just kinda mindless reactionism and had nothing to do with the original question.)

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#57

Post by ThaddeusQuay2 »

wmf wrote: post #53
ThaddeusQuay2 wrote: post #51

I don't understand why TEC hasn't been somehow used to make 3D chips workable by now, even just for specialized applications where size and weight are not major concerns. "Thermoelectric cooling uses the Peltier effect to create a heat flux between the junction of two different types of materials. A Peltier cooler, heater, or thermoelectric heat pump is a solid-state active heat pump which transfers heat from one sid…

Peltier cooling is very inefficient; water cooling (especially with microchannels, where you could use some layers of the chip for cooling) is more efficient.

Yet we don't do that today, either. Do we? Also, water is not as easy to handle as electricity, and such a system seems to be more complex than a sandwich of computing layers and thermoelectric cooling layers. Additionally, the side where the heat finally comes out of the package, could be connected to a thermoelectric generator, thus converting some of that heat back to electricity, which could then be used to reduce the total amount of electrical input, thus raising the efficiency of the entire system.

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#58

Post by redwood »

sliverstorm wrote: post #38

Let me get this straight. Today, we have trouble dissapating the heat produced by a single die. To solve this problem, we are going to stack 1000 dies, and produce 1000x as much heat. Who cares about whether the heat can travel up the column- where is the improvement in cooling technology to remove 1000x the heat from the die stack?

I would assume the heat would be expected to ooze out the sides of each layer... e.g like the condiments leaking out the burger when you squeeze it :-)

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#59

Post by saintfiends »

michaelchisari wrote: post #3

3D game programming in pure Python, anyone? :) If this is real (and since it's IBM and they're claiming production by 2013, I'm optimistic), this is going to be a huge game changer on so many levels.

Pixar movies quality rendering in game play with C++ maybe.

Re: Breakthrough: The Secret to Making Processors 1,000 Times Faster

#60

Post by jpdoctor »

First 3D silicon stack I saw was in the late 80s. (Back then it was a stack of 2.) The field has produced a rich string of PR announcements and funding proposals over that time though.

The problems then as now: Heat dissipation and signal integrity as you pass through the stack.

Post reply on HN