YOU’VE HEARD THE HYPE: The foundation of semiconductor fabrication will be transformed over the next few years as multistory structures rise up from dice that today are planar. After almost a decade of major semiconductor engineering efforts worldwide aimed at making the structures manufacturable, three-dimensional ICs are poised for commercialization starting next year—several years behind schedule.
Chip makers have spent the past several years perfecting the through-silicon vias that will interconnect 3-D ICs. Now that TSVs have been honed for 2-D tasks, such as transferring data from the front side of a planar chip to bumps on the flip side, the stage is set for 3-D ICs using stacked dice.
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