

IBM: New heat-dissipating glue will allow 1000x processor speedup via stacking - breadbox
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/35358.wss

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0x12
With all the 1000x time speedups that IBM releases I'm amazed that we have to
wait for computers at all, no matter what the task.

I really wished that these announcements would be at least accompanied by
working prototypes showing the main claims in a realistic setting.

Since these are all things that may (or may not) be realized in the distant
future when those reading the article will have long forgotten about it or
will be safely deceased I suspect they are more of a marketing ploy than a
true announcement of a breakthrough.

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breadbox
Generally I agree. This one caught my eye because it addresses such a basic
problem that it seems more realistic to expect this one to actually make it
from theory to practice.

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0x12
Yes, but the actual release states that they plan to jointly develop this (3M
and IBM), not that they even have this adhesive, let alone the tech to stack
the chips and do the interconnects.

Really, this is an announcement of the development of vapourware, it doesn't
come much more tenous than that.

IBM seems to be pretty desperate for the spotlight lately.

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ChuckMcM
See the comments on the press release here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2981939>

(which is now dead)

Basically the bogosity here is that while its cool that the glue can act as a
heat spreader, the heat still has to go somewhere. This has been a bigger
hindrance on 'stacked' silicon. How do you pull 250 - 500 watts out of a chip
efficiently. Its a very hard problem. If you have good chops on how to do this
you can make a mid six figure income designing power stages for fighter jet
radar units.

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ajscherer
While I am as dubious as the rest of you about how likely we are to actually
see this, I appreciated learning that adhesives are one of 3M's 46 core
technology platforms. Does anyone know what the other 45 are?

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rsanchez1
I get the feeling that researchers and manufacturers always wait until we're
close to falling short of Moore's Law to come out with advances like this. I
guess they can push quantum computing back a few more years now.

