Design automation for a 3DIC FFT processor for synthetic aperture radar: A case study

This work discusses a 1024-point, memory-on-logic 3DIC FFT processor for synthetic aperture radar (SAR), sent to fabrication in the 180 nm MIT Lincoln Labs 3D FDSOI 1.5 V process along with the design flow required to realize it with off-the-shelf commercial 2D tools. The work shows how the vertical dimension can be exploited for novel memory architecture tradeoffs that are not feasible in 2D, reducing the energy consumed per memory operation in the FFT by 60.3%. In comparison to its 2D counterpart, the SAR FFT processor exhibits a 53.0% decrease in average wire length, a 24.6% increase in maximum operating frequency and a 25.3% decrease in total silicon area.