Modeling and analysis of electrothermal effects on global ULSI interconnects

Abstract

In high-performance integrated circuits, electrothermal effects have important implications for both performance and reliability. This paper presents a detailed modeling and analysis of the electrothermal effects of global interconnects. Interconnect Joule heating increases the line temperature whereas the rise of the temperature decreases the power dissipation due to the increase of the line resistance. Therefore, the interconnect temperature profile will be stable when it reaches steady state. Based on these electrothermal coupling effects, an iterative method is proposed to analyze the temperature profile and signal response of global interconnects. The proposed method is proven to be convergent, with accuracy above 98% with respect to 3D solver COMSOL, which uses finite element analysis. It is also shown that neglecting electrothermal coupling will overestimate interconnect temperature and propagation delay.