The monolithic 3D advantage: Monolithic 3D is far more than just an alternative to 0.7x scaling

Over the last 50 years we have seen tremendous technological and economic progress in semiconductors and microelectronics by following what is known as Moore's Law. Accordingly about every two years the amount of transistors we can integrate on an IC doubles. A new form of scaling is shaping up as an alternative to maintain the exponential increase in integration - scaling up using monolithic 3D technology. The NAND Flash vendors are the early adopters of this new alternative scaling and are developing multiple variations of products that are scheduled to reach volume production in 2015. In this tutorial we present the advantages of 3D IC technology. Some of these advantages can only be achieved via monolithic 3D. It is possible that this emerging technology could bring back the trend we had previously enjoyed with reductions of cost, decreases in power consumption, and improvements in performance, and bring additional compelling benefits.

I. Introduction

Over the last 50 years we have seen tremendous technological and economic progress in semiconductors and microelectronics following what is known as Moore's Law. Accordingly, about every two years the amount of transistors we can integrate on an IC doubles. This exponential increase in integration is achieved by scaling down the dimensions of the microcircuit by a factor of 0.7 at every technology node. For most of that half-century the scaling was relatively easy and was associated with about a 30% reduction of the transistor cost, a greatly improved performance, and markedly reduced power consumption. For most of us who have lived and worked this scaling - ‘those were the days!’