Quantifying Architectural Impact of Liquid Cooling for 3D Multi-Core Processors

For future multi-core processors, 3D integration is regarded as one of the most promising techniques since it improves performance and reduces power consumption by decreasing global wire length. However, 3D integration causes serious thermal problems since the closer proximity of heat generating dies makes existing thermal hotspots more severe. Conventional air cooling schemes are not enough for 3D multi-core processors due to the limit of the heat dissipation capability. Without more efficient cooling methods such as liquid cooling, the performance of 3D multi-core processors should be degraded by dynamic thermal management. In this paper, we examine the architectural impact of cooling methods on the 3D multi-core processor to find potential benefits of liquid cooling. We first investigate the thermal behavior and compare the performance of two different cooling schemes. We also evaluate the leakage power consumption and lifetime reliability depending on the temperature in the 3D multi-core processor.