Monolithic 3-D Integration.

The demands of future applications in computing (from self-driving cars to bioinformatics) overwhelm the projected capabilities of current electronic systems. The need to process unprecedented amounts of loosely structured data is driving the push for ultradense and fine-grained integration of traditionally off-chip components (e.g., sensors, memories) with energy-efficient computation units—all within a single chip. Monolithic 3-D integration is a leading approach for building such future systems, as it naturally enables ultradense connectivity between various heterogeneous technologies inside a single chip. This article discusses exciting recent progress toward realizing monolithic 3-D systems and elucidates key benefits that these new systems offer. Monolithic 3-D integration promises to enable the next wave of gains in performance (both energy and speed) for coming generations of applications as well as provides the means for developing rich additional functionalities such as sensing-immersed-in-computation that lie beyond the scope of traditional computing today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]