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3D-Carbon: An Analytical Carbon Modeling Tool for 3D and 2.5D Integrated Circuits

Yujie Zhao, Yang Zhao, Cheng Wan, Yingyan Lin

TL;DR

3D-Carbon addresses the lack of carbon modeling tools for 3D/2.5D ICs by offering an analytical framework that separately accounts for embodied and operational emissions across the life cycle. The tool decomposes embodied carbon into die, bonding, packaging, and interposer contributions, and couples this with a bandwidth-constrained operational carbon model using energy-use data and carbon intensity. Validation against EPYC 7452 and Lakefield LCAs demonstrates competitive accuracy and highlights the importance of manufacturing complexity, BEOL configurations, and yield. Case studies on NVIDIA autonomous vehicle GPUs illustrate how Tc and Tr can guide sustainable design decisions, with open-source availability to enable broader adoption and future extensions.

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is crucial for Integrated Circuits (ICs) across their lifecycle, particularly in manufacturing and use. Meanwhile, ICs using 3D/2.5D integration technologies have emerged as promising solutions to meet the growing demands for computational power. However, there is a distinct lack of carbon modeling tools for 3D/2.5D ICs. Addressing this, we propose 3D-Carbon, an analytical carbon modeling tool designed to quantify the carbon emissions of 3D/2.5D ICs throughout their life cycle. 3D-Carbon factors in both potential savings and overheads from advanced integration technologies, considering practical deployment constraints like bandwidth. We validate 3D-Carbon's accuracy against established baselines and illustrate its utility through case studies in autonomous vehicles. We believe that 3D-Carbon lays the initial foundation for future innovations in developing environmentally sustainable 3D/2.5D ICs. Our open-source code is available at https://github.com/UMN-ZhaoLab/3D-Carbon.

3D-Carbon: An Analytical Carbon Modeling Tool for 3D and 2.5D Integrated Circuits

TL;DR

3D-Carbon addresses the lack of carbon modeling tools for 3D/2.5D ICs by offering an analytical framework that separately accounts for embodied and operational emissions across the life cycle. The tool decomposes embodied carbon into die, bonding, packaging, and interposer contributions, and couples this with a bandwidth-constrained operational carbon model using energy-use data and carbon intensity. Validation against EPYC 7452 and Lakefield LCAs demonstrates competitive accuracy and highlights the importance of manufacturing complexity, BEOL configurations, and yield. Case studies on NVIDIA autonomous vehicle GPUs illustrate how Tc and Tr can guide sustainable design decisions, with open-source availability to enable broader adoption and future extensions.

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is crucial for Integrated Circuits (ICs) across their lifecycle, particularly in manufacturing and use. Meanwhile, ICs using 3D/2.5D integration technologies have emerged as promising solutions to meet the growing demands for computational power. However, there is a distinct lack of carbon modeling tools for 3D/2.5D ICs. Addressing this, we propose 3D-Carbon, an analytical carbon modeling tool designed to quantify the carbon emissions of 3D/2.5D ICs throughout their life cycle. 3D-Carbon factors in both potential savings and overheads from advanced integration technologies, considering practical deployment constraints like bandwidth. We validate 3D-Carbon's accuracy against established baselines and illustrate its utility through case studies in autonomous vehicles. We believe that 3D-Carbon lays the initial foundation for future innovations in developing environmentally sustainable 3D/2.5D ICs. Our open-source code is available at https://github.com/UMN-ZhaoLab/3D-Carbon.
Paper Structure (25 sections, 17 equations, 5 figures, 5 tables)

This paper contains 25 sections, 17 equations, 5 figures, 5 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background
  3. Commercial 3D/2.5D Integration Technologies
  4. 3D Integration
  5. 2.5D Integration
  6. IC Carbon and Carbon Optimization Metrics
  7. IC Total Life Cycle Carbon
  8. Indifference Point and Breakeven Time Analysis
  9. 3D-Carbon Modeling Tool
  10. 3D-Carbon: High-Level Overview
  11. 3D-Carbon: Embodied Carbon Emission
  12. $C_{die}^{3D/2.5D}$ Model
  13. $C_{bonding}^{3D/2.5D}$ Model
  14. $C_{packaging}^{3D/2.5D}$ Model
  15. $C_{int}^{2.5D}$ Model
  16. ...and 10 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: A carbon modeling tool tracks embodied and operational carbon emissions throughout ICs' lifecycle gupta2022act.
  • Figure 2: The vertical stack diagram of 3D and 2.5D integration options studied in this paper.
  • Figure 3: The overview of the proposed 3D-Carbon.
  • Figure 4: Validation of 3D-Carbon against (a) 2.5D EPYC 7452 EPYC and (b) 3D Lakefield lakefield.
  • Figure 5: Overall carbon emissions of NVIDIA DRIVE series: 2-die 3D/2.5D ICs with the (a) homogeneous and (b) heterogeneous approaches MCMGPU. Note that InFO_1/InFO_2 represent chip-first/chip-last approaches, respectively.