Cost-effective design of scalable high-performance systems using active and passive interposers

Cutting-edge high-performance systems demand larger and denser processors, but future lithographic nodes are expected to introduce higher manufacturing costs and yield challenges. Die-level integration technologies like passive interposer-based 2.5D have demonstrated the potential for cost reductions through die partitioning and yield improvement, but system performance and scalability may be impacted. Alternatively, active interposer technology, the intersection of 3D and 2.5D methodologies, can provide higher-performance interconnect networks to integrate chiplets, but the active interposer die is itself subject to cost and yield concerns. In this work, we perform a cost and performance comparison between traditional monolithic 2D SoCs, 2.5D passive interposers, and 2.5D/3D active interposers to demonstrate the trade-offs between the interposer types for current and future high-performance systems. This work introduces a multi-die core-binning cost model to demonstrate the yield improvements from interposer-based die partitioning of large multi-core processors. The relative cost and performance scaling trade-offs of passive and active interposer dies are then compared for the target systems, demonstrating that both methodologies can indeed provide cost-effective integration for different system requirements. Finally, this work demonstrates how the extra “prepaid” silicon area of the interposers can be leveraged for fault tolerance to improve yield and cost-effectiveness. In summary, this work concludes that both active and passive interposers can cost-effectively improve the functional and parametric yield of high-performance systems, together providing a cost versus performance space to meet a range of design requirements.