> Wafer scale integration [1] has come up periodically over the years.
Not merely years, but decades. I worked with a wafer-scale group in MIT Lincoln Laboratory back in the late 80s. I'd say there is a reason the technology hasn't taken off in the past 35 years, but who knows, maybe now is the time for wafer scale integration to shine.
Incidentally, that group was originally Ken Olsen's group, after he left to go found Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). They had a lot of talent and produced some interesting wafers. The tech back then (4in wafers iirc) used laser reconfigurability to route around bad cells.
I think a part of this is that the clock speed increases made most other more expensive solutions not yet commercially viable, but now that 'the end' is in sight a lot of those more expensive solutions are making a come back. You could see the same happening in software to mirror the far more exotic hardware that we use now compared to single core CPUs which for a very long time were the norm.
Not merely years, but decades. I worked with a wafer-scale group in MIT Lincoln Laboratory back in the late 80s. I'd say there is a reason the technology hasn't taken off in the past 35 years, but who knows, maybe now is the time for wafer scale integration to shine.
Incidentally, that group was originally Ken Olsen's group, after he left to go found Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). They had a lot of talent and produced some interesting wafers. The tech back then (4in wafers iirc) used laser reconfigurability to route around bad cells.