Monolithic 3D Chip

Oh, thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity.

So I want to start with kind of the big thing that we're talking about today.

What is a monolithic 3D integrated silicon microchip?

So most of us are pretty familiar with what a silicon chip is.

They're the foundation of modern microelectronics.

It's powering everything we have, from our smartphones to laptops to current very powerful AI systems.

Traditionally, if you're thinking about microprocessor chips, they're built like a single-story city.

We have all the components arranged side by side on a flat surface.

So a monolithic 3D integrated chip takes a little bit different approach.

So instead of spreading everything out, we actually stack layers of components, which we call transistors, vertically.

We're almost like building a skyscraper instead of expanding a city horizontally only.

And the word monolithic here means that all of these layers They're actually built and integrated on the same underlying starting silicon substrate in a layer-by-layer fashion.

And here, by stacking devices in the vertical dimension, we can pack more functionalities into the same chip area footprint while improving the performance and energy efficiency at the same time.

And I think this has been a real goal of computing microchip manufacturing industry as things get smaller and smaller now to make it denser, right? Yeah,

exactly.

We always talk about Moore's law, right? So we always try to get higher integration density, better functionality, better performance, and better energy efficiency at the same time.

So this is kind of another way for us to do it nowadays.