The first (2D) Integrated Circuits were not monolithic. In fact, they had hand-soldered interconnects between circuit components. Let's fast-forward 50 years to the time of the 3D Integrated Circuit... the first 3D-ICs are not monolithic either. Will history repeat itself? Will the monolithic idea win? 

We have a blog post today from Israel Beinglass, the CTO of MonolithIC 3D Inc. Israel spent almost 20 years at Applied Materials, and was Chief Technology Officer, Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager at various divisions there. Israel gives us a "fab-equipment perspective" on Monolithic 3D technology.

Whenever I discuss 3D with someone, the first question they ask is: Can we really cool these things? Will this technology be useful at all? Thought I should post on the topic...

It's easy to understand why heat removal is an issue for 3D: if you stack two chips of power density PD atop each other, the net power density doubles and becomes 2*PD. Furthermore, one of the chips is far away from the heat sink, making heat removal even more difficult. Several solutions to this problem exist; I'm going to summarize them below.

We have a guest contribution today from Zvi Or-Bach, the President and CEO of MonolithIC 3D Inc. It describes Zvi's perspective on the ASIC industry, and his thoughts on where it is going. If you have comments or questions, please use the "comments" section of the blog - Zvi will respond.

Entanglement Squared
"In quantum entanglement, two objects are connected by an invisible wave, like an umbilical cord, that allows them to essentially share the same existence. When something happens to one object, it immediately happens to the other, no matter how far apart they are."

Whether there actually is an entanglement or it is just a coincidence, the lithography challenge and the interconnect challenge seem to be affecting the semiconductor industry in coordination.

We changed our company name from NuPGA to MonolithIC 3D last week, and launched our new website. For more details of our name change, check out this link.

I'm hoping to use this blog to convey my impressions of 3D technology, interact with other bloggers and talk about the semiconductor industry in general. Will post at least once a week... My colleagues in Monolithic 3D Inc. will also share their thoughts with this blog. Comments and questions are most welcome; please use the comments section in the blog or e-mail me at deepak@monolithic3D.com.