Impact of Process Variations on Carbon Nanotube Bundle Interconnect for Future FPGA Architectures

As CMOS technology continues to scale, copper interconnect (CuI) will hinder the performance and reliability of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) motivating the need for alternative interconnect solutions for future process technologies. In this paper, we investigate the impact of statistical variations in interconnect properties on FPGA timing yield (TY) when bundles of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) are used as interconnect in the FPGA routing fabric. The results indicate that SWCNT bundle-based interconnect (SWCNTBI) can provide a superior performance-yield trade-off over FPGAs implemented using traditional CuI in future process technologies.