Critical thermal issues in nanoscale IC design

A key design challenge for microprocessor is the increasing constraint on power density from platform, process, and reliability physics. Accurate prediction of thermal performance during design convergence is an opportunity of innovation for next-generation processor designs. To achieve best-in-class reliability and to address failure mechanism such as electromigration and Joule heating, we need a self-consistent modeling methodology that allows thermal predictions from device to interconnect at all length scales. Here we discuss the challenges in thermal scaling and various thermal modeling tools applied at Intel for architecture pathfinding, reliability verification, and design validation.