Micron will begin production of a new memory device called the Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC), which will be built using the first commercial CMOS manufacturing technology to employ through-silicon vias (TSVs).
The pair says that IBM's TSV chip-making process enables Micron's HMC to achieve speeds 15 times faster than technology available today.
IBM presented the details of its TSV manufacturing breakthrough at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting on December 5 in Washington, DC.
HMC delivers bandwidth and efficiencies a massive leap beyond current device capabilities. HMC prototypes, for example, have clocked in with bandwidth of 128 gigabytes per second (GB/s). By comparison, current state-of-the-art devices deliver 12.8 GB/s. HMC also requires 70 percent less energy to transfer data while offering a small form factor — just 10 percent of the footprint of conventional memory.
HMC will enable a new generation of performance in applications ranging from large-scale networking and high-performance computing, to industrial automation.