Three-dimensional wafer scale integration for ultra-large-scale cognitive systems

In this paper, we present a method to use three-dimensional wafer scale integration (3D-WSI) to build large-scale cognitive systems up to the scale of a human brain (10¹⁰ neurons, 10¹³ synapses). We analyze the effect of scaling by simulating some cognitive systems. The result exhibits attractive properties of the 3D-WSI technology, as compared with the traditional integration scheme using printed circuit boards. At the scale of a human brain, the 3D-WSI system reduces the communication latency by about 10X, while consuming at least 100X less communication power.