The appropriate interconnect model has changed several times over the
past two decades due to the application of aggressive technology
scaling. New, more accurate interconnect models are required to manage
the changing physical characteristics of integrated circuits. Currently,
RC models are used to analyze high resistance nets while capacitive
models are used for less resistive interconnect. However, on-chip
inductance is becoming more important with integrated circuits operating
at higher frequencies, since the inductive impedance is proportional to
the frequency. The operating frequencies of integrated circuits have
increased dramatically over the past decade and are expected to maintain
the same rate of increase over the next decade, approaching 10 GHz by
the year 2012. Also, wide wires are frequently encountered in important
global nets, such as clock distribution networks and in upper metal
layers, and performance requirements are pushing the introduction of new
materials for low resistance interconnect, such as copper interconnect
already used in many commercial CMOS technologies.
On-Chip Inductance in High Speed Integrated Circuits deals with the
design and analysis of integrated circuits with a specific focus on
on-chip inductance effects. It has been described throughout this book
that inductance can have a tangible effect on current high speed
integrated circuits. For example, neglecting inductance and using an
RC interconnect model in a production 0.25 mum CMOS technology can
cause large errors (over 35%) in estimates of the propagation delay of
on-chip interconnect. It has also been shown that including inductance
in the repeater insertion design process as compared to using an RC
model improves the overall repeater solution in terms of area, power,
and delay with average savings of 40.8%, 15.6%, and 6.7%,
respectively.
On-Chip Inductance in High Speed Integrated Circuits is full of design
and analysis techniques for RLC interconnect. These techniques are
compared to techniques traditionally used for RC interconnect design
to emphasize the effect of inductance.
On-Chip Inductance in High Speed Integrated Circuits will be of
interest to researchers in the area of high frequency interconnect,
noise, and high performance integrated circuit design.
