When we talk about liquid cooling, the first thing that comes to mind are the radiators integrated into the case of our PC. However, in recent years designs have been developed based on the vertical connection of components. What makes the thermal suffocation higher, it forces the designers to reduce the clock frequencies of their designs. This led to the development of various solutions, such as the use of Peltier plates. TSMC’s bet? Literally integrate the radiator into the processor.
Liquid cooling integrated by TSMC
At the VLSI Symposium, TSMC engineers previewed their research based on on integrating liquid cooling inside the chip as a solution to the thermal suffocation problem in 3DIC designs. Which consists of integrating the pipes through which the coolant passes inside the chip itself.
The reason for the development of this technology by TSMC is clear, when cooling a processor today, we usually use solutions that cool the outermost layer of it. Since most designs don’t consist of multiple chips vertically, conventional cooling systems are quite good. The problem comes when you consider a design with several vertical chips, where traditional refrigeration systems are not efficient enough.
TSMC has studied different ways of cooling the interior of the chip, both in terms of distribution and in how to provide liquid cooling to the different layers of the chip. Ultimately, his conclusions were that the best method is the Directly water cooled, which can dissipate up to 2.6 kW of heat and offers a temperature delta of 63 ° C.
Of course, this has just been presented and from there until we see this technology being used in our PC’s chips, we will have to wait a few more years.
Not only TSMC is looking into it, but Intel too
There is no doubt that temperature issues in the design and development of integrated circuits are not exclusive to TSMC, Intel is also developing such processors and concentrating its factories and future manufacturing nodes there. This implies that they will also encounter the same problems as TSMC.
However, Intel will not remain idle, as we have learned through the publication of a patent, titled LIQUID COOLING BY CONDUCTIVE INTERCONNECTION. This results in liquid cooling through conductive interconnections. Which shows that the problem of thermal capping in 3DIC designs is common throughout the industry and a problem big enough that the world’s two largest chipmakers have started researching and developing solutions to address the problem.
