A Silicon Interposer Platform Utilizing Microfluidic Cooling for High-Performance Computing Systems

In this paper, a silicon interposer platform using microfluidic cooling is proposed for high-performance computing systems. The key advantage of the the silicon interposer is its very fine-pitch wiring, which enables high-bandwidth off-chip signaling for the chips assembled on the silicon interposer. Compared with conventional air cooling, embedded microfuidic cooling is used for better cooling and thermal isolation of chips on the silicon interposer. A test vehicle consisting of a silicon interposer and a silicon dice with microfluidic I/Os and embedded microfluidic heat sinks is fabricated and assembled for thermal measurements. At a flow rate of 50 mL/min, the measured temperature is 55.9°C for a power density of 97 W/cm2, which represents a normalized thermal resistance of 0.24 K · cm2/W. The thermal simulations based on the measured thermal resistance show that 40.1% reduction in the silicon interposer temperature is achieved with microfluidic cooling compared to air cooling. Moreover, thermal coupling between the dice on the silicon interposer is significantly reduced with microfluidic cooling, which significantly benefits the integration density and the signaling performance by integrating chips more closely and reducing interconnect length.