TSMC Launches 3Dblox 2.0 Standard to Promote 3D Chip Architecture Design

TSMC held the Open Innovation Platform Ecosystem Forum in California, USA on September 27th, announcing the launch of the 3Dblox 2.0 open standard and the establishment of the 3Dblox Committee. As an independent standards organization, TSMC expects to establish industry standards and promote 3D IC design.

TSMC proposed the first generation open standard 3Dblox in 2022 to simplify the design of 3D chips in the semiconductor industry and facilitate modularization. TSMC stated that with the support of a large-scale ecosystem, 3Dblox has become a key design driver for the future development of 3D chips.

TSMC pointed out that the 3Dblox 2.0 launched this time can explore different 3D architectures, shape innovative early design solutions, and provide feasibility analysis and research on power consumption and thermal energy. 3Dblox 2.0 will enable designers to integrate power domain specifications with 3D physical structures in a complete environment, and conduct power and thermal simulations of the entire 3D system.

In addition, 3Dblox 2.0 supports the reuse of small chip designs, such as small chip mapping, to further improve design productivity. TSMC stated that 3Dblox 2.0 has obtained support from major electronic design automation (EDA) partners and has developed a design solution that fully supports all TSMC 3DFabric products.

TSMC stated that the committee collaborates with key members such as Ansys, Cadence, Siemens, and Synopsys to establish 10 technical groups on different themes to propose recommendations for strengthening standards and maintaining the interoperability of EDA tools.

At the forum, TSMC also showcased the achievements of the OIP 3DFabric alliance. TSMC, Synopsys, and automatic testing equipment (ATE) manufacturers collaborated to develop testing chips, achieving the goal of increasing testing productivity by 10 times.

At present, there are 21 companies in the 3DFabric alliance, including Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, IBIDEN, Unimicron, Advantest, Teradyne, and others.