Impact of self-heating effect on long-term reliability and performance degradation in CMOS circuits

Author

Semenov, Oleg ; Vassighi, Arman ; Sachdev, Manoj

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Waterloo, Ont., Canada

Volume

6

Issue

1

fYear

2006

fDate

3/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

17

Lastpage

27

Abstract

As the technology feature size is reduced, the thermal management of high-performance very large scale integrations (VLSIs) becomes an important design issue. The self-heating effect and nonuniform power distribution in VLSIs lead to performance and long-term reliability degradation. In this paper, we analyze the self-heating effect in high-performance sub-0.18-μm bulk and silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS circuits using fast transient quasi-dc thermal simulations. The impact of the self-heating effect and technology scaling on the metallization lifetime and the gate oxide time-to-breakdown (TBD) reduction are also investigated. Based on simulation results, an optimized clock-driver design is proposed. The proposed layout reduces the hot-spot temperature by 15°C and by 7°C in 0.09-μm SOI and bulk CMOS technologies, respectively.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; VLSI; integrated circuit design; integrated circuit metallisation; integrated circuit packaging; integrated circuit reliability; integrated circuit testing; silicon-on-insulator; thermal management (packaging); 0.09 micron; 0.18 micron; 15 C; 7 C; bulk CMOS circuits; gate oxide TBD reduction; high-performance VLSI; long-term reliability; metallization lifetime; nonuniform power distribution; optimized clock-driver design; performance degradation; self-heating effect; silicon-on-insulator CMOS circuits; thermal management; very large scale integration; CMOS technology; Circuit simulation; Integrated circuit reliability; Power distribution; Silicon on insulator technology; Technology management; Thermal degradation; Thermal management; Transient analysis; Very large scale integration; CMOS technology scaling; long-term reliability; performance degradation; self-heating effect;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Device and Materials Reliability, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1530-4388

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TDMR.2006.870340

Filename

1618650