The 3D stack
The three biggest AutoPhi designs do not fit on one flat die. They are built as two routed tiers joined by thousands of vertical vias — signal, power and thermal — and docked into a single part.
Transcript
Two routed dies. The three biggest AutoPhi designs do not fit on one flat die. So they are built as two tiers — each one routed on its own, each one checked on its own.
Then the tiers are brought together. The top tier lifts off the bench and comes to rest one chip-thickness above the bottom tier. The two sit apart like an exploded view, waiting for the vertical threading.
The vertical vias ignite. Thousands of hair-thin columns run top to bottom through the whole stack. Signal vias in cool white. Power vias in bright blue. Thermal vias in muted cyan. Signal, power, thermal — the three jobs vertical threading has to do.
The top tier descends the last chip-thickness and docks flush. The seam flashes once. Two dies, one chip.
The IP is the chip →One trigger, three strands →Owned since 2017 →A battery is the chip without the processing →Hand on a chip →
© Christopher Gabriel Brown (CRI-ONE), cri-one.com