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Scientists to build 3D brain-density processors
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 15 December 2009, 15:10 IST   |    1 Comments
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Scientists to build 3D brain-density processors
Bangalore: Scientists in Switzerland have warned that increasingly powerful computer processors are set to guzzle the entire world electricity supply by the year 2100. According to them, only 3D myria-core chips can save the day, reports The Register. "Industry's datacenters already consume as much as two percent of available electricity," says John R Thome of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). "As consumption doubles over a five-year period, the supercomputers of 2100 would theoretically use up the whole of the electrical supply!" According to Thome, the answer is to expand on multicore processors by building three-dimensional arrays of cores - rather than simply laying them out on a sheet. Scientists at the EPFL have allied with others at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and from IBM's Swiss lab at Ruschlikon to conduct the CMOSAIC project. This project is aimed at delivering processors with as many transistors per cm3 as there are neurons in the human brain. Thome and his colleagues believe that 3D processors will be more energy-efficient than ordinary flat ones, bowling out the issue of using up all the world's power supplies. However, they'll still heat up, and air cooling won't be good enough. These scientists plan to build their 3D devices with a network of 50-micron cooling pipes running through them. The pipes will carry liquid coolant, which will be heated into a vapour by the hot cores. It will then be condensed, cooled and recirculated. The assembled Swiss scientists expect to see their first 3D integrated circuitry going into supercomputers around 2015, and the first ones fitted with the new liquid-chill gear in 2020.

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