High-Performance Logic-on-Memory Monolithic 3-D IC Designs for Arm Cortex-A Processors

Abstract

Monolithic 3-D IC (M3-D) is a promising solution to improve the performance and energy-efficiency of modern processors. But, designers are faced with challenges in design tools and methodologies, especially for power and thermal verifications. We developed a new physical design flow that optimally places and routes cache modules in one tier and logic gates in the other. Our tool also builds high-quality clock and power delivery networks targeting logic-on-memory M3-D designs. Finally, we developed a sign-off analysis tool flow to evaluate power, performance, area (PPA), thermal, and voltage-drop quality for given M3-D designs. Using our complete register transfer level (RTL)-to-Graphic Design System (GDS) tool flow, we designed commercial quality 2-D and M3-D implementation of Arm Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53 processors in a commercial 28-nm technology. Experimental results show that our 3-D processors offer 20% (A7) and 21% (A53) performance gain, compared with their 2-D commercial counterparts. The voltage-drop degradation of our 3-D Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53 processors is less than 3% of the supply voltage, while temperature increase is 10.71 °C and 13.04 °C, respectively.