Thermoelectric Codesign of 3-D CPUs and Embedded Microfluidic Pin-Fin Heatsinks

Abstract

Microfluidic cooling is considered an effective cooling method suitable for 3-D ICs. However, TSVs are placed in pin fins and coolant flows in between pin fins, so inserting more pin fins to increase the vertical bandwidth reduces the cooling capacity. This paper codesigns 3-D CPU architectures and microfluidic heatsinks to simultaneously optimize the performance and cooling capacity of 3-D ICs with microfluidic pin-fin heatsinks. The article shows that the codesign approach achieves better performance and energy efficiency than optimizing only the cooling capacity or the vertical bandwidth.