Emerging monolithic 3D integration: Opportunities and challenges from the computer system perspective

In the past decade, monolithic three dimensional integrated circuits (M3D-ICs) advance fast and demonstrate several important breakthroughs in the fabrication process and circuit level design. This article surveys recent research works on M3D technology from the computer system perspective with several case studies, and presents the opportunities as well as the challenges brought by this emerging technology. We also discuss possible applications of M3D based computer architectures. As the M3D technology is attracting enormous attention from both industry and academia, we expect that this article can be a good reference for the researchers and industrial partners who are interested in this fast evolving field, and promote the research activities of computer system/architecture design with this emerging technology.