
Through-Silicon Transistors Could Make Stacking Chips Smarter - sohkamyung
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/design/throughsilicon-transistors-could-make-stacking-chips-smarter
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kingosticks
> Chip designers fear that a foundry contracted to make 1 million chips for a
> designer might instead make 2 million and secretly sell the other half
> themselves, explains Winkler.

Is there any documented case of this for a reasonably complicated chip? I
can't conceive of a situation where the risk would be worth it for the subset
of customers it would even be possible for.

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tyingq
There's certainly lots of documented cases of counterfeit versions of complex
chips. Not the same thing, but does show the environment for this kind of
activity exists.

~~~
kingosticks
Yeh, with the difference being that it wouldn't be the foundry doing that. If
you can't trust your fab you are dead in the water.

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tyingq
It does seem to happen now and again:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/26/dram_technology_thi...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/26/dram_technology_thievery_by_taiwanese_tech_co/)

[https://www.techpowerup.com/245790/chinese-dram-companies-
st...](https://www.techpowerup.com/245790/chinese-dram-companies-stealing-
dram-ip-from-samsung-and-sk-hynix)

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Symmetry
I'd really like to see 3D stacked caches in the future using technology like
this. Heat dissipation concerns mean that most logic is going to want to live
on a single plane next to a heat sink but SRAM cells are pretty low power and
situating them below the logic could make them both larger and lower latency
at the same time.

