Reliability-performance tradeoffs between 2.5D and 3D-stacked DRAM processors

Three-dimensional DRAM stacking has emerged as a vehicle for scaling system densities and performance improvement. The two design choices for interfacing to processors are - i) a separate core die connected to the DRAM stack via a silicon interposer (2.5D), and ii) DRAM die stacked on top of the core die (3D). These alternatives have different performance, power, and reliability behaviors. Specifically, 3D designs realize higher performance but operate at higher temperatures and thus exhibit lower lifetime. On the other hand, 2.5D designs provide lower bandwidth between the core die and the DRAM stack, but exhibit significantly longer lifetime due to less thermally-induced degradation. This paper explores this tradeoff between reliability and performance of 3D and 2.5D stacked memory systems. Our results indicate that, in general, lower voltage and frequency operations with 3D stacked systems may achieve balanced reliability-performance tradeoff.