iTEM: a chip-level electromigration reliability diagnosis tool using electrothermal timing simulation

In this paper, we present a new electromigration reliability diagnosis tool (iTEM) for CMOS VLSI circuits. Unlike previous electromigration reliability tools, iTEM can estimate the interconnect temperature rise due to joule heating and heat conduction from the substrate using a newly developed lumped thermal model. Including the temperature effect, iTEM provides more accurate electromigration reliability diagnosis. Moreover, it is very fast and can analyze circuit layouts containing tens of thousands of transistors on a desktop workstation.