Performance Analysis of On-Chip Communication Structures under Device Variability

On-chip communication is becoming an important bottleneck in the design and operation of high performance systems where it has to face additional challenges due to device variability. Communication structures such as tapered buffer drivers, interconnects, repeaters, and data storage elements are vulnerable to variability, which can limit the performance of the on-chip communication networks. In this regard, it becomes important to have a complete understanding of the impact that variability will have on the performance of these circuit elements in order to design high yield and reliable systems. In this paper, the authors have characterized the performance of the communication structures under the impact of random dopant fluctuation (RDF) for the future technology generations of 25, 18, and 13 nm. For accurate characterization of their performance, a Monte Carlo simulation method has been used along with predictive device models for the given technologies. Analytical models have been developed for the link failure probability of a repeater inserted interconnect which uses characterization data of all communication structures to give an accurate prediction of the link failure probability. The model has also been extended to calculate the link failure probability of a wider communication link.