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 PowerVIA 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.
PowerVIA, 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. Current CPUs 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 chips, 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.
A chip built with backside power delivery has the signal wires coming out of the front side
of the wafer the transistors sit on, with the power wires coming out of the bottom or backside.
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 backside 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 5% 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 cost 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 Viya means you can fill more of the die 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 Viya
no more difficult than more traditional chips, but that remains to be seen.
We should expect the first Intel chips with Power Viya 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 thank you for watching this video.
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