Vertical DRAM Stacking Expands Thermal Design Space Beyond HBM-on-GPU (imec)
Vertical DRAM Stacking Expands Thermal Design Space Beyond HBM-on-GPU (imec)
imec researchers published a paper titled "Beyond HBM-on-GPU: Thermal Design Envelope for 3D Volumetric DRAM-on-GPU Integration", evaluating a 3D memory architecture that vertically rotates and stacks DRAM dies above the GPU with a cooling cavity in between, as an alternative to conventional 2.5D HBM and direct HBM-on-GPU stacking.
Researchers at imec published “Beyond HBM-on-GPU: Thermal Design Envelope for 3D Volumetric DRAM-on-GPU Integration.”
Summary:
Researchers evaluated a 3D memory architecture that rotates DRAM dies vertically above a GPU and places cooling cavities between them as an alternative to conventional 2.5D HBM and direct-stacked HBM-on-GPU. Package-level thermal simulations examined stack height, memory capacity and organization, cooling-cavity materials, stack orientation, mold insertion, and the addition of a distributed memory-controller/network-on-chip tier.
Find the technical paper here. September 2026
Chen, Yukai, Melina Lofrano, Khakim Akhunov, Jonas Svedas, Arjun Singh, Nathan Laubeuf, Diksha Moolchandani et al. “Beyond HBM-on-GPU: Thermal Design Envelope for 3D Volumetric DRAM-on-GPU Integration.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2609.24343 (2026).
Source: Semiconductor Engineering Chips and Packaging · semiengineering.com