Loading...

Design of n-tier multilevel interconnect architectures by using carbon nanotube interconnects

Farahani, E. K ; Sharif University of Technology | 2015

840 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. DOI: 10.1109/TVLSI.2014.2360713
  3. Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc , 2015
  4. Abstract:
  5. In this paper, n-tier methodology is developed to design multilevel interconnect architecture of macrocells using single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) bundles. Upper limit of low-bias voltage of SWCNT bundle interconnects is derived and its dependence on temperature, SWCNTs' diameter, and interconnect length is studied. Possibility of using SWCNT bundles as local interconnects at 7.5-nm technology node is discussed, and it is shown that SWCNT bundles with 1 nm diameter cannot be used at the first interconnect metal level. Using Cu and SWCNT bundles, multilevel interconnect architecture of a 7.5-nm ASIC macrocell is designed which reduces the number of metal levels by 27% and power dissipation by 25% compared with the multilevel interconnect architecture designed with only Cu. The effect of aspect ratio (AR) on the n-tier design is studied. It is shown that decreasing AR of SWCNT bundle interconnects, decreases total power dissipation of the ASIC macrocell by 41%. The impact of temperature variation on the design of multilevel interconnect architecture is also investigated
  6. Keywords:
  7. Carbon nanotube (CNT) ; Low-bias regime ; Multilevel interconnect architecture ; N-tier methodology ; Temperature variation ; Architecture ; Aspect ratio ; Carbon ; Design ; Electric losses ; Integrated circuit interconnects ; Yarn ; Carbon nanotube interconnects ; Impact of temperatures ; Interconnect architectures ; Interconnect metals ; Local interconnects ; Metal levels ; Technology nodes ; Total power dissipation ; Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCN)
  8. Source: IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems ; Volume 23, Issue 10 , October , 2015 , Pages 2128-2134 ; 10638210 (ISSN)
  9. URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6922588