Thermal performance of CoolCube™ monolithic and TSV-based 3D integration processes

CoolCube™ is a monolithic 3D technology which has the potential to solve the interconnection density limitation of the existing TSV-based 3D integration processes. Since the active devices are fabricated on extremely this die substrates, heat dissipation has been pointed as a potential showstopper issue for this emerging technology. This work provides a comparative study of the thermal performance of the CoolCube and TSV-based 3D integration processes for a range of technology parameters and application scenarios. Results show that CoolCube exhibits thermal performance similar to or even better than the TSV-based technologies thanks to its very tight die-to-die thermal coupling.