IBM announced last week that it will be partnering with 3M to develop a new adhesive. And no, not for an electronic Post-It. The two companies are working on a new adhesive that can both dissipate heat and connect to semiconducting chips together. Their goal is to develop an adhesive that would enable IBM to build a processor “tower” comprised of a stack of potentially up to 100 chips.
Such stacking would allow for dramatically higher levels of integration for information technology and consumer electronics applications. Processors could be tightly packed with memory and networking, for example, into a “brick” of silicon that would create a computer chip 1,000 times faster than today’s fastest microprocessor enabling more powerful smartphones, tablets, computers and gaming devices.
This is something that I’ll be interested to see happen. In theory, this type of stacking arrangement should allow for faster processing, but lower overall power use. Getting the chips connected adhesively, though, isn’t nearly as big a technical challenge as dissipating the heat from the chips. With lower power usage, there won’t be as much heat, but it seems like a big challenge.
If it works, though, we just might see a new class of faster processor emerge
