Assembly of a 3D Cellular Computer Using Folded E-Blocks
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Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
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Department of Engineering and Computer Science, Clark College, Vancouver, WA 98663, USA
3
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97207, USA
4
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Massimo Mastrangeli and Nam-Trung Nguyen
Micromachines 2016, 7(5), 78; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi7050078
Received: 11 March 2016
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Revised: 15 April 2016
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Accepted: 20 April 2016
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Published: 28 April 2016
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Building by Self-Assembly)
The assembly of integrated circuits in three dimensions (3D) provides a possible solution to address the ever-increasing demands of modern day electronic devices. It has been suggested that by using the third dimension, devices with high density, defect tolerance, short interconnects and small overall form factors could be created. However, apart from pseudo 3D architecture, such as monolithic integration, die, or wafer stacking, the creation of paradigms to integrate electronic low-complexity cellular building blocks in architecture that has tile space in all three dimensions has remained elusive. Here, we present software and hardware foundations for a truly 3D cellular computational devices that could be realized in practice. The computing architecture relies on the scalable, self-configurable and defect-tolerant cell matrix. The hardware is based on a scalable and manufacturable approach for 3D assembly using folded polyhedral electronic blocks (E-blocks). We created monomers, dimers and 2 × 2 × 2 assemblies of polyhedral E-blocks and verified the computational capabilities by implementing simple logic functions. We further show that 63.2% more compact 3D circuits can be obtained with our design automation tools compared to a 2D architecture. Our results provide a proof-of-concept for a scalable and manufacture-ready process for constructing massive-scale 3D computational devices.
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Keywords:
cell matrix; architecture; self-configurability; self-assembly
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MDPI and ACS Style
Pandey, S.; Macias, N.J.; Ciobanu, C.; Yoon, C.; Teuscher, C.; Gracias, D.H. Assembly of a 3D Cellular Computer Using Folded E-Blocks. Micromachines 2016, 7, 78. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi7050078
AMA Style
Pandey S, Macias NJ, Ciobanu C, Yoon C, Teuscher C, Gracias DH. Assembly of a 3D Cellular Computer Using Folded E-Blocks. Micromachines. 2016; 7(5):78. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi7050078
Chicago/Turabian StylePandey, Shivendra, Nicholas J. Macias, Carmen Ciobanu, ChangKyu Yoon, Christof Teuscher, and David H. Gracias. 2016. "Assembly of a 3D Cellular Computer Using Folded E-Blocks" Micromachines 7, no. 5: 78. https://doi.org/10.3390/mi7050078
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