Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a way to stack high-performance silicon circuits directly on top of one another, a breakthrough that could help the semiconductor industry keep increasing computing power without shrinking transistors further.
The approach tackles one of the biggest challenges facing chipmakers as Moore’s law begins to slow. For decades, the industry boosted performance by making transistors smaller and packing more of them onto a chip. But as devices approach fundamental physical limits, further miniaturization is becoming increasingly difficult.
Instead of shrinking components, the Illinois team is building upward. By stacking multiple layers of silicon circuits, engineers can increase transistor density, reduce communication distances inside chips, and improve energy efficiency.
The researchers say their process could accelerate the development of monolithic three-dimensional chips, a long-sought technology that many experts see as the next step in semiconductor scaling.
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