An ABCD parameter-based modeling and analysis of crosstalk induced effects in single-walled carbon nanotube bundle interconnects

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have the potential to revolutionize the interconnects in future nanoscale integrated circuits. In the proposed work, crosstalk effects are investigated in SWCNTs at 21 nm and 15 nm technology nodes for intermediate as well as global interconnects. An ABCD parameter based approach has been used to investigate crosstalk delay and noise in both sparse as well as dense SWCNT bundled interconnect system. It is evident from the simulation results that the proposed model is not only 100% accurate but also almost 10 times faster than SPICE. The worst case crosstalk induced delay and peak crosstalk noise voltages for SWCNT bundle interconnects are compared to those of conventional copper (Cu) interconnects at the intermediate as well as global level interconnects. Simulation results also confirm that dense SWCNTs are always ahead of sparse SWCNTs with respect to performance advantage numbers over copper for every levels of interconnects and irrespective of technology nodes. As far as the worst case peak crosstalk noise is concerned, there is a critical length after which the performance of the dense SWCNT bundles is better than that of its sparse counterpart. Proposed model, analysis, along with supportive simulation results prove that dense SWCNT bundled interconnect is one of the most promising alterative interconnect solution for future generation of nanoscale circuits compared to copper with respect to performance as well as signal integrity issues.