3D IC technology

Pouya Dormiani
Christopher Lucas

What is a 3D IC?

Could be Heterogeneous

Stacked 2D (Conventional) ICs

Motivation

Interconnect structures increasingly consume more of the power

and delay budgets in modern design
Plausible solution: increase the number of nearest neighbors seen
by each transistor by using 3D IC design
Smaller wire cross-sections, smaller wire pitch and longer lines to
traverse larger chips increase RC delay.

RC delay is increasingly becoming the dominant factor

At 250 nm Cu was introduced alleviate the adverse effect of

increasing interconnect delay.
130 nm technology node, substantial interconnect delays will result.

3D Fabrication Technologies

Many options available for realization of 3D circuits

Choice of Fabrication depends on requirements of
Circuit System

Beam
Recrystallization

Processed Wafer
Bonding

Silicon Epitaxial
Growth

Solid Phase
Crystallization

Deposit polysillicon
and fabricate TFTs
-not practial for 3D circuits

Bond two fully

processed wafers
together.
-Similar Electrical Properties

Epitaxially grow a
single cystal Si

Low Temp
alternative to SE.

on all devices
-Independent of temp. since
all chips are fabricated then
bonded
-Good for applications where
chips do independent
processing
-However Lack of
Precision(alignemnt) restricts
interchip communication to
global metal lines.

-High temperatures cause

-Offers Flexibilty of creating

siginificant cause significant

degradation in quality of
devices on lower layers
-Process not yet
manufacturable

multiple layers
-Compatible with current
processing environments
-Useful for Stacked SRAM
and EEPROM cells

due to high temp of melting

polysillicon
-Suffers from Low carrier
mobility
-However high perfomance
TFTs
have been fabricated using
low temp processing which
can be used to implement 3D
circuits

Performance Characteristics
Timing
Energy

With shorter interconnects in 3D ICs, both switching

energy and cycle time are expected to be reduced

Timing

In current technologies, timing is

interconnect driven.
Reducing interconnect length in
designs can dramatically reduce
RC delays and increase chip
performance
The graph below shows the
results of a reduction in wire
length due to 3D routing
Discussed more in detail later in
the slides

Energy performance
Wire length reduction has an impact on
the cycle time and the energy dissipation
Energy dissipation decreases with the
number of layers used in the design
Following graphs are based on the 3D tool
described later in the presentation

Energy performance graphs

Design tools for 3D-IC design

Demand for EDA tools

As

the technology matures, designers will

want to exploit this design area

Current tool-chains
Mostly

academic

We will discuss a tool from MIT

3D Standard Cell tool Design

3D Cell Placement
Placement

3D Global Routing
Inter-wafer

by min-cut partitioning
vias

Circuit layout management

MAGIC

3D Standard Cell Placement

Natural to think of a 3D
integrated circuit as
being partitioned into
device layers or planes
Min cut part-itioning
along the 3rd dimension
is same as minimizing
vias

Total wire length vs. Vias

Can trade off increased total wire length for fewer inter-plane
vias by varying the point at which the design is partitioned
into planes

Plane assignment performed prior to detailed placement

Yields smaller number of vias, but greater overall wire length

Total wire length vs. Vias (Cont)

Plane

assignment not made until detailed placement

stage

Yields smaller total wire length but greater number of vias

Intro to Global Routing

Overview
Global

Routing involves generating a loose route

for each net.

Assigns a list of routing regions to a net without actually

specifying the geometrical layout of the wires.

Followed

by detailed routing

Finds the actual geometrical shape of the net within the

assigned routing regions.

Usually

either sequential or hierarchical algorithms

Illustration of routing areas

y
x

y
x

z
Detailed routing of net when
routing areas are known

Hierarchical Global Routing

Tool uses a hierarchical global routing

algorithm
Based

on Integer programming and Steiner

trees
Integer programming approach still too slow for
size of problem and complexity (NP-hard)
Hierarchical routing methods break down the
integer program into pieces small enough to be
solved exactly

2D Global Routing

A 2D Hierarchical global router works by recursively

bisecting the routing substrate.

At each partitioning step the pins on the side of the

routing region is allocated to one of the two subregions.
Wires Connect cells on both sides of the partition line.

Wires within a Region are fully contained or terminate at a

pin on the region boundry.

These are cut by the partition and for each a pin is inserted
into the side of the partition

Once complete, the results can be fed to a detailed router

or switch box router (A switchbox is a rectangular area
bounded on all sides by blocks)

Illustration of Bisection

Extending to 3D

Routing in 3D consists of routing a set of aligned

congruent routing regions on adjacent wafers.

Wires can enter from any of the sides of the routing region in
addition to its top and bottom

3D router must consider routing on each of the layers in

addition to the placement of the inter-waver vias
Basis idea is: You connect a inter-waver via to the port
you are trying to connect to, and route the wire to that via
on the 2D plane.

All we need now is enough area in the 2D routing space to route

to the appropriate via

3D Routing Results
Percentage Of 2D
Total wire Length
Minimizing for Wire Length:
2 Layers ~ 28%
5 Layers ~ 51 %

Minimizing for via count:

2 Layers ~ 7%
5 Layers ~ 17%

3D-MAGIC

MAGIC is an open source layout editor developed at UC

Berkeley
3D-MAGIC is an extension to MAGIC by providing
support for Multi-layer IC design
Whats different

New Command :bond

Bonds existing 2D ICs and places inter-layer Vias in the design
file
Once Two layers are bonded they are treated as one entity

Concerns in 3D circuit
Thermal Issues in 3D-circuits
EMI
Reliability Issues

Thermal Issues in 3D Circuits

Thermal Effects dramatically impact interconnect and device reliability in 2D

circuits
Due to reduction in chip size of a 3D implementation, 3D circuits exhibit a sharp
increase in power density
Analysis of Thermal problems in 3D is necessary to evaluate thermal robustness of
different 3D technology and design options.

Heat Flow in 2D
Heat generated arises due to switching
In 2D circuits we have only one layer of Si to
consider.

Heat Flow in 3D
With multi-layer circuits , the upper
layers will also generate a significant
fraction of the heat.
Heat increases linearly with level increase

Heat Dissipation

All active layers will be insulated from each other by layers of dielectrics
With much lower thermal conductivity than Si
Therefore heat dissipation in 3D circuits can accelerate many failure
mechanisms.

Heat Dissipation in
Wafer Bonding versus Epitaxial Growth

Wafer Bonding(b)

2X Area for heat dissipation

Epitaxial Growth(a)

Heat Dissipation in
Wafer Bonding versus Epitaxial Growth

Design 1

Equal Chip Area

Design 2

Equal metal wire pitch

High epitaxial temperature

Temperatures actually higher for Epitaxial second layers
Since the temperature of the second active layer T2 will
Be higher than T1 since T1 is closer to the substrate
and T2 is stuck between insulators

EMI in 3D ICs

Interconnect Coupling Capacitance and cross talk

Coupling between the top layer metal of the first active layer and the device on
the second active layer devices is expected

EMI

Interconnect Inductance Effects

Shorter

wire lengths help reduce the

inductance
Presence of second substrate close to global
wires might help lower inductance by
providing shorter return paths

Reliability Issues?

Electro thermal and Thermo-mechanical effects

between various active layers can influence electromigration and chip performance
Die yield issues may arise due to mismatches
between die yields of different layers, which affect
net yield of 3D chips.

Implications on Circuit Design

and Architecture

Buffer Insertion
Layout of Critical Paths
Microprocessor Design
Mixed Signal ICs
Physical design and Synthesis

Buffer Insertion

Buffer Insertion
Use of buffers in 3D circuits to break up long interconnects
At top layers inverter sizes 450 times min inverter size for the relevant
technology
These top layer buffers require large routing area and can reach up to
10,000 for high performance designs in 100nm technology
With 3D technology repeaters can be placed on the second layer and
reduce area for the first layer.

Layout of Critical Paths and

Microprocessor Design

Once again interconnect delay dominates in 2D

design.
Logic blocks on the critical path need to
communicate with each other but due to placement
and desig constraints are placed far away from
each other.
With a second layer of Si these devices can be
placed on different layes of Si and thus closer to
each other using(VILICs)
In Microprocessor design most critical paths
involve on chip caches on the critical path.
Computational modules which access the cache
are distributed all over the chip while the cache is
in the corner.
Cache can be placed on a second layer and
connected to these modules using (VILICs)

Mixed Signal ICs and Physical

Design

Digital signals on chip can couple and interfere with

RF signals
With multiple layers RF portions of the system can be
separated from their digital counterparts.
Physical Design needs to consider the multiple layers
of Silicon available.
Placement and routing algorithms need to be
modified

Conclusion
3D IC design is a relief to interconnect
driven IC design.
Still many manufacturing and
technological difficulties
Needs strong EDA applications for
automated design