Reliability degradation with electrical, thermal and thermal gradient stress in interconnects

An empirical reliability model for electromigration-induced failure in metal interconnects under thermal, electrical, and thermal gradient stress is introduced. Based upon the limited reported measurements on static thermal gradient stress that are available, this model incorporates thermal gradient stress into the probability density function of the time to failure, t_F. With this model, temperature measurement accuracy and temperature gradient measurement accuracy requirements for multi-site on-chip sensors that can be used in power/thermal management algorithms are developed that target achieving 10% accuracy in the median time to failure (MTF) of a circuit.