Why Stacking Chips Like Pancakes Could Mean a Huge Leap for Laptops

For decades, you could test a computer chip's mettle by how small and tightly packed its electronic circuitry was. Now Intel believes another dimension is as big a deal: how artfully a group of such chips can be packaged into a single, more powerful processor. From a report: At the Hot Chips conference Monday, Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger will shine a spotlight on the company's packaging prowess. It's a crucial element to two new processors: Meteor Lake, a next-generation Core processor family member that'll power PCs in 2023, and Ponte Vecchio, the brains of what's expected to be the world's fastest supercomputer, Aurora. "Meteor Lake will be a huge technical innovation," thanks to how it packages, said Real World Tech analyst David Kanter. For decades, staying on the cutting edge of chip progress meant miniaturizing chip circuitry. Chipmakers make that circuitry with a process called photolithography, using patterns of light to etch tiny on-off switches called transistors onto silicon wafers. The smaller the transistors, the more designers can add for new features like accelerators for graphics or artificial intelligence chores. Now Intel believes building these chiplets into a package will bring the same processing power boost as the traditional photolithography technique.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.