Low-power gated clock tree optimization for three-dimensional integrated circuits

Author(s):  
Yu-Chuan Chen ◽  
Chih-Cheng Hsu ◽  
Mark Po-Hung Lin
2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (11) ◽  
pp. 1650142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamineni Sumanth Kumar ◽  
John Reuben

Three-Dimensional (3D) Integrated Circuits (ICs) offers integrating capabilities of ‘More than Moore’ while overcoming CMOS scaling limitations, providing the advantages of low power, high performance and reduced costs. The design of the Clock Distribution Network (CDN) for a 3D IC has to be done meticulously to guarantee reliable operation. In the design of the CDN, clock buffers are crucial units that affect the clock skew, slew and power dissipated by the clock tree. In this paper, we propose a two-stage buffering technique that inserts clock buffers for slew control and skew minimization. Such a buffering technique decreases the number of buffers and power dissipated in the clock tree when compared to previous works which were inserting buffers primarily for slew control. We incorporate the proposed buffering technique into the 3D clock tree synthesis algorithm of previous work and evaluate the performance of the clock tree for both single Through-Silicon Vias (TSV) and mutiple TSV approach. When evaluated on IBM benchmarks (r1-r5), our buffering technique results in 25–28% reduction in buffer count and 25–29% reduction in power for single TSV-based 3D CDN. For multi-TSV approach, the performance of our work is even better:around 31–38% reduction in buffer count and 32–39% reduction in power.


Author(s):  
W. SHEN ◽  
Y. CAI ◽  
X. HONG ◽  
J. HU
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
S. Khadpe ◽  
R. Faryniak

The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) is an important tool in Thick Film Hybrid Microcircuits Manufacturing because of its large depth of focus and three dimensional capability. This paper discusses some of the important areas in which the SEM is used to monitor process control and component failure modes during the various stages of manufacture of a typical hybrid microcircuit.Figure 1 shows a thick film hybrid microcircuit used in a Motorola Paging Receiver. The circuit consists of thick film resistors and conductors screened and fired on a ceramic (aluminum oxide) substrate. Two integrated circuit dice are bonded to the conductors by means of conductive epoxy and electrical connections from each integrated circuit to the substrate are made by ultrasonically bonding 1 mil aluminum wires from the die pads to appropriate conductor pads on the substrate. In addition to the integrated circuits and the resistors, the circuit includes seven chip capacitors soldered onto the substrate. Some of the important considerations involved in the selection and reliability aspects of the hybrid circuit components are: (a) the quality of the substrate; (b) the surface structure of the thick film conductors; (c) the metallization characteristics of the integrated circuit; and (d) the quality of the wire bond interconnections.


Author(s):  
Halit Dogan ◽  
Md Mahbub Alam ◽  
Navid Asadizanjani ◽  
Sina Shahbazmohamadi ◽  
Domenic Forte ◽  
...  

Abstract X-ray tomography is a promising technique that can provide micron level, internal structure, and three dimensional (3D) information of an integrated circuit (IC) component without the need for serial sectioning or decapsulation. This is especially useful for counterfeit IC detection as demonstrated by recent work. Although the components remain physically intact during tomography, the effect of radiation on the electrical functionality is not yet fully investigated. In this paper we analyze the impact of X-ray tomography on the reliability of ICs with different fabrication technologies. We perform a 3D imaging using an advanced X-ray machine on Intel flash memories, Macronix flash memories, Xilinx Spartan 3 and Spartan 6 FPGAs. Electrical functionalities are then tested in a systematic procedure after each round of tomography to estimate the impact of X-ray on Flash erase time, read margin, and program operation, and the frequencies of ring oscillators in the FPGAs. A major finding is that erase times for flash memories of older technology are significantly degraded when exposed to tomography, eventually resulting in failure. However, the flash and Xilinx FPGAs of newer technologies seem less sensitive to tomography, as only minor degradations are observed. Further, we did not identify permanent failures for any chips in the time needed to perform tomography for counterfeit detection (approximately 2 hours).


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document