Knowing how a processor is structured inside is often a quite complicated task, not only because there are not many people willing to disassemble a chip that is extremely expensive to investigate it, but also because companies tend to keep secrets quite well. how they are built. This makes it quite difficult to decipher what each thing is, something that prevents us from knowing its structure, although in this case the best processor for gaminghe Ryzen 7 9800X3D of amd It’s not like there’s too much for us to see.
Each company that is dedicated to developing hardware components has a series of techniques that allow them to advance by leaps and bounds in the creation of new technologies capable of greatly increasing the performance of current computers, and if we talk about AMD it is clear that We must always highlight the creations that have been made mainly for gaming. Although it is likely that we will be surprised to learn that one of its most current and most powerful processors has a structure that turns out to be mostly fictitious, since only 7% of what the chip measures in total represents the configuration of the cores and the 3D V-Cache.
A next-generation chip that has 93% “fake” silicon
The latest generation designs that some chips have never cease to surprise us, we have seen how AMD has managed to create a series of processors focused on a purpose thanks to new technologies that allow performance to be increased by improving one of the many specifications that a CPU has. But the way the company’s processors that incorporate the technology are built 3D V-Cache It is really new compared to other models, since it largely changes the structure it has to implement this additional cache.
And now we know how the Ryzen 9000 X3D inside, which have the SRAM L3 cache chip below the CCD, something that, according to AMD, allows higher clock speeds by offering more thermal headroom, also highlighting that compared to previous processors, both the CCD chips and the 3D V-Cache have been thinned to levels less than 10 µm, which implies that the sum of both is less than 20 µm, which if we add it to the thickness of the section with the metal layers that allow the connectivity (BEOL) would add about 40-45 µm.
9800X3D XSec Highlights:
o Both CCD and SRAM are thinned (sub 10 um), so thick «dummy Si» oxide bonded to the stack
o SRAM If area is larger than the CCD — there’s a 50 um “oxide edge” for the CCD
o As with the 2nd gen, the BPV’s are terminated on the Al of the CCDDecember 17, 2024 • 01:14
The point that stands out is that the total thickness of the package is about 800 µm (about 0.8 mm), that is, if we subtract the stack of CCD, SRAM and BEOL chips that has a thickness of 50 µm we see that The chip actually has 93% fictitious silicon that is designed to keep the dies intact, that is, a way to protect the chip conglomerate from overheating since in addition to incorporating this part of additional silicon, they are also joined by an oxide layer between them that offer the possibility of having better thermal performance.
What do you think of this arrangement of AMD chips? Personally, we also think that they do it to maintain standardization in terms of the size and shape of the processors. If they suddenly changed their shape now it would be quite… complicated, especially for heatsink and motherboard manufacturers.