Intel is quite literally about to flip the modern CPU upside down next year
they're going to be introducing a dramatic sounding piece of technology called Power via to their new processor
lineups and it looks like the wave of the future not just for Intel CPUs but
products from other chip makers as well okay Riley you've got my attention tell
me what's so great about it is what you just said probably power via or backside
power delivery to use a less Intel specific term is all about the tiny
wires connected to your CPU's transistors the parts that allow your
CPU to think currency views have separate wires for power and data that
both Point downwards towards the socket however this method of CPU fabrication
presents a few problems one is that having power and Signal wires so close
to each other results in interference and therefore degraded performance
another is that the wires used for power delivery have a natural resistance to
them and as we've put more and more transistors on our chip tips we've had
to make these wires smaller and smaller which creates even more resistance with
the result being undesirable voltage drops that also limit performance trying
to pack in so many small wires also increases cost and Manufacturing
complexity as chip makers have to use very expensive lithography in order to
meet their goals so instead of just continuing to fight this problem more
and more as transistors keep getting smaller backside power delivery Works
smarter not harder and further separates power and Signal wires we'll tell you
exactly what this looks like as well as the pros and cons of this approach right
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giving our audience 20 off so check them out at the link below a chip built with
backside power delivery has the signal wires coming out of the front side of
the wafer the transistor sit on with the power wires coming out of the bottom or
backside now in the previous method we discussed all wires come out of the
front side though confusingly usually the chip is flipped the other way so the
front side extends towards the CPU socket with the transistors back near
the heat spreader so they could be cooled down it's all a little wacky
chip Engineers like to have fun you know with backside power delivery although
you do have a few signal wires still coming off the back side to allow the
CPU to communicate with the rest of the system the large majority of those
signal wires are internal CPU transistor to transistor connections which are
placed on the front side Intel has to polish the wafer down very thin in order
to expose power connections to build out backside power delivery meaning a dummy
carrier wafer is bonded to the front side to give the whole stack structural
support it's like a really solid sandwich you should not eat this
mitigates the issues of interference and voltage drop we discussed earlier Intel
claims this results in a little over five percent higher core frequency on
e-cores than would otherwise be possible and gains on the higher performance P
cores should be similar another big Advantage is because you're not trying
to fit as many wires as you can into a certain space manufacturing is cheaper
and easier of course since backside power delivery is a new fabrication
method there's an associated lost with rolling it out but Intel says that the
savings that come as a result of the overall easier manufacturing will more
than offset this throw in the fact that power via means you can fill more of the
dye with actual Library cells groups of transistors that process data rather
than blank space and it isn't hard to see why Samsung and tsmc are also
working to get their own chips featuring backside power delivery to Market I mean
this all sounds pretty great but are there any downsides for the consumer the
one that has stuck out to some enthusiasts is that there are now quite
a few layers of front side wiring separating the transistors from where a
CPU Cooler would sit Intel claims that there's enough thermal conductivity
through these layers to make cooling CPUs with power via no more difficult
than more traditional chips but that remains to be seen we should expect the
first Intel chips with power via to hit the market in mid-2024 with chips
featuring backside power delivery from other manufacturers coming at least a
couple years later comment down below if there are more topics in chip making
you'd like us to tackle but for now all this talk about chips and Wafers is
really making me want some snacks it's snack time for Riley it's also time to
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