Analysis of the impact of power distribution on the efficiency of microchannel cooling in 3D ICs

Liquid microchannel cooling of 3D ICs is a very attractive idea which could help solving the problem of ever-increasing power dissipation due to its good cooling efficiency and potential scalability. However, this cooling method has some very different properties than the well-understood forced air convection. In particular, its cooling efficiency with respect to power variations in the chip is still not completely analysed. Therefore, in this paper a thorough study of microchannel cooling efficiency as a function of intra- and interlayer power consumption variation is presented. We use a finite element method analysis to run a coupled thermo-fluidic simulation of a dedicated 3D chip model. We show that the placement of chip units with respect to microchannels can significantly influence the peak chip temperature. In particular, for a 3D chip including Intel's i7-6950X 10-core processor, a temperature difference of nearly 9°C was observed.