1. The Wires EE4271 VLSI Design Professor Shiyan Hu Office: EERC 518
Adapted and modified from Digital Integrated Circuits: A Design Perspective
by Jan M. Rabaey, Anantha Chandrakasan, and Borivoje Nikolic.

2. Modern Interconnect

3. Modern Interconnect - II

4. Interconnect Delay Dominates
300
250
200
Interconnect delay
150
Delay (psec)
100
Transistor/Gate delay 50 4
[CF] The problem is that at 0.18u and below interconnect overwhelmingly dominates the delay on a chip, and current design methods have been created to only consider the delay from the transistor gate. So, you never get a true timing picture of the performance of your chip during your design iterations. The impact of this is difficulty in achieving Design Closure. This is important because it will cause delay in the delivery of your chip and uncertainty in its performance.
[Michel] The above graphic shows how interconnect delay accounts for most of the delay in chips today and will continue to do so with advancing technologies. This is mainly due to the shrinking gate sizes which reduces the gate capacitance and the shrinking widths and spacing of the interconnect which increases the overall interconnect capacitance. Please turn to the next slide titled “and Coupling Dominates Interconnect”.
0.8
0.5
0.35
0.25
0.25
0.18
0.15
Technology generation (m)
Source: Gordon Moore, Chairman Emeritus, Intel Corp.

5. Wire Model

6. Capacitor
A capacitor is a device that can store an electric charge by applying a voltage
The capacitance is measured by the ratio of the charge stored to the applied voltage
Capacitance is measured in Farads

7. 3D Parasitic Capacitance
Given a set of conductors, compute the capacitance between all pairs of conductors. 1V + - - + + + - + -
C=Q/V - - -

8. Simplified Model
Area capacitance (Parallel plate): area overlap between adjacent layers/substrate
Fringing/coupling capacitance:
between side-walls on the same layer
between side-wall and adjacent layers/substrate m3 m2 m2 m2 m1

9. The Parallel Plate Model (Area Capacitance)
Capacitance is proportional to the overlap between the conductors and inversely proportional to their separation

10. Wire Capacitance
More difficult due to multiple layers, different dielectric m2 m1 m3
=3.9
=8.0
=4.0
=4.1
multiple
dielectric

11. Simple Estimation Methods - I
C = Ca*(overlap area)
+Cc*(length of parallel run)
+Cf*(perimeter)
Coefficients Ca, Cc and Cf are given by the fab
Cadence Dracula
Fast but inaccurate

12. Simple Estimation Methods - II
Consider interaction between layer i and layers i+1, i+2, i–1 and i–2
Cadence Silicon Ensemble
Accuracy 50%

13. Library Based Methods
Build a library of tens of thousands of patterns and compute capacitance for each pattern
Partition layout into blocks, and match with the library
Accuracy 20%

14. Accurate Methods In Industry
Finite difference/finite element method
Most accurate, slowest
Raphael
Boundary element method
FastCap, Hicap

15. Fringing versus Parallel Plate
Coupling capacitance dominates.

16. Wire Resistance Basic formula R=(/h)(l/w)  : resistivity l
h: thickness, fixed for a given technology and layer number
l: conductor length
w: conductor width l h w

17. Sheet Resistance Simply R=(/h)(l/w)=Rs(l/w)
Rs: sheet resistance Ohms/square, where h is the metal thickness for that metal layer. Given a technology, h is fixed at each layer.
l: conductor length
w: conductor width l w

18. Typical Rs (Ohm/sq) Min Typical Max M1, M2 0.05 0.07 0.1 M3, M4 0.03
0.04
Poly 15 20 30
Diffusion 10 25
100
N-well
1000
2000
5000

19. Contact and Via Contact: Via: link metal with diffusion (active)
Link metal with gate poly
Via:
Link wire with wire

20. Interconnect Delay

21. Analysis of Simple RC Circuit
vT(t)
v(t) C
state variable
Input
waveform

22. Analysis of Simple RC Circuit
Step-input response: v0
v0u(t)
v0(1-e-t/RC)u(t)
match initial state:
output response for step-input:

23. 0.69RC v(t) = v0(1 - e-t/RC) -- waveform under step input v0u(t)
v(t)=0.5v0  t = 0.69RC
i.e., delay = 0.69RC (50% delay)
v(t)=0.1v0  t = 0.1RC
v(t)=0.9v0  t = 2.3RC
i.e., rise time = 2.2RC (if defined as time from 10% to 90% of Vdd)
For simplicity, industry uses TD = RC (= Elmore delay)
We use both RC and 0.69RC in this course. In textbook, it always uses 0.69RC.

24. Elmore Delay
50%-50% point delay
Delay=RC
(Precisely, 0.69RC)
Delay

25. Elmore Delay - III
What is the delay of a wire?

26. Elmore Delay – IV Precisely, should be 0.69RC/2
Assume: Wire modeled by N equal-length segments
For large values of N:
Precisely, should be 0.69RC/2

27. Elmore Delay - V n2 n1 n1 n2 C/2 R R=unit wire resistance*length
C=unit wire capacitance*length

28. RC Tree Delay Unit wire cap=1, unit wire res=1 Precisely, 0.69*48.52 2 7 2 7
24+4*2=32 1 1
3.5
3.5 2
Unit wire cap=1, unit wire res=1
2*( )=24
24+7*3.5=48.5
Precisely, 0.69*48.5
RC Tree Delay=max{32,48.5}=48.5

29. More Accurate RLC Delay Model
I=V/R at t=0 is not right since you assume that you can see R with 0 time
At time t=0, switch is on. This effect is not felt everywhere instantaneously. Rather, the effect is propagated with a speed u. Denote by c0 the speed of light, epsilon the permittivity and mu the permeability of the dielectric of the medium which the wire is in, L and C the unit wire inductance and capacitance, respectively. According to Maxwell’s law,

30. RLC Delay - II Voltage and Current at time t1 and t2
R0 is the resistance you can really see at t1. R cannot be seen yet.

31. RLC Delay - III
What is R0?
The front of the voltage travels from 0 to l. Suppose that the distance it moves is dx, the capacitance to be charged is Cdx. The charge is thus dQ=CdxV.
Current I=dQ/dt=CVdx/dt=CVu
where is called characteristic impedance.

32. RLC Delay - IV R0 is a function of the medium
For Printed Circuit Board (PCB), it is about ohm
For any x between 0 and l, we always have Ix=Vx/R0,Il=Vl/R0 when x=l
Note that there is a resistor R. We should have Il=Vl/R
What happens if R!= R0?

33. RLC Delay - V At load, the wave will be reflected back to the source.
The amplitude and polarity of this reflected wave are such that the total voltage, the sum of incident voltage and reflected voltage, satisfies Il=Vl/R
If the incident voltage is V, denote by pV the reflected voltage, where p is called the reflection coefficient.
If incident current is V/R0, then reflected current is –pV/R0
Thus, (V+pV)/(V/R0–pV/R0)=R.
p=(R/R0-1)/(R/R0+1)
R=R0, p=0, no reflection
R=infty, p=1, wire is unterminated
R=0, p=-1, wire is short-circuited
There can be multiple rounds of reflections.

34. RLC Delay Example
Consider a wire of length l, R0=100 ohm, R=900 ohm driven by the source resistance (transistor equivalent resistance) Rs= 14 ohm. Source voltage is 12V as a step input at time t=0. We want to compute the waveform at the end of l.
Reflection coefficient
At t=0, V1=12*R0/(R0+Rs)=10V since it cannot see R yet
At t=td=l/u, wave V1 arrives at the end and is reflected as V2=pRV1=8V. The total voltage at the end is V1+V2 =18V
At time t=2td, wave V2 arrives at the source and reflected as V3=pSV2=-0.75*8=-6V
At time t=3td, wave V3 arrives at the end and is reflected as V4=pRV3=-4.8V, so the total voltage at the end is V1+V2+V3+V4=7.2V
Continues this process. Next total voltage at the end is 13.7V.
The total voltage at l will converge to 12*R/(R+Rs)=11.7V
Rs=14

35. RLC Delay Example - II
Voltage at the end of l

36. When To Use RLC Model v0u(t) v0 v0(1-e-t/RC)u(t)
RC Model, V0=12
The voltages at first few td have large magnitudes and are quite different from RC model. This is because Rs<R0.
When Rs>>R0, V1 is small and is the reflected voltage V2.
The total voltage at the end of the wire will gradually increase to 11.7V, which is the same as predicted by RC model.
Thus, RLC model should only be used when Rs is small (see also Figure 4-21 in the textbook) since RLC model is expensive to compute.
RLC model can be used when the switching is fast enough since signal transition time is proportional to Rs.

37. Summary Wire capacitance Wire resistance
Fringing/coupling capacitance dominates area capacitance
Wire resistance
RC Elmore delay model for wire
For single wire, 0.69RC/2
RC tree
RLC model for wire
Reflection
When to use