News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:SanDisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year. by sitkack on Saturday May 03, 2014 @05:22PM (#7692384)
I'd use RF from the controller to the different layers then you would only have to run power. Could even have 2 or 3 transmitters in phased array with little islands of storage on layers of silicon. This would also enable redundant storage (multiple recv) and simultaneous read and write (mimo). The distances in are cm and the signals wouldn't leave the drive package. With each layer exposing power and ground to the layer above the architecture would be scalable in Z just by adding more independent wafers.

https://eeweb.ee.ucla.edu/publications/journalVwaniRoychowdh...

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.159...

Re:SanDisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year. by jacquesm on Saturday May 03, 2014 @06:21PM (#7692544)
Quite hard to do this reliably with 1000's of signals in a constricted space. It also requires considerably more circuitry than wiring would, the very first trick of routing is that you try to do your placement in such a way that the routing of signals is trivial. This is of course not always possible and it's a very complicated problem at chip scale but I don't see how adding 1000's of RF based signals would help here. You simply have to make sure that stuff stacked vertically lines up where you want the interconnects to be. After all, RF would not only require a lot of bandwidth, it would also right away require error correction and all kinds of transmission lines.

Optical would probably be even better than RF (and that too has its problems).

Re:SanDisk announces 4TB SSD, hopes for 8TB next year. by sitkack on Saturday May 03, 2014 @08:06PM (#7692798)
The wiring is localized and free since it is lithographed and short run. No long wires for transmission line effects and high power driving. Optical is option but I think harder socially and technically in the now-term.

60Ghz CMOS is already a thing http://www.seas.ucla.edu/brweb/papers/Journals/RJan06.pdf

http://www.home.agilent.com/upload/cmc_upload/All/Webinar_60...

Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-wideband

Watch out for the "Hazards of Prophecy"