Signal-Power Interconnect Co-Design Based on Various Technology Options

Abstract

While the impact of various BEOL improvements on circuit-level PPA has been well studied, their implications for PDNs have not been properly explored. This paper presents a signal-power co-optimization flow using early IR drop analysis after the placement stage. Using this flow, we studied the impact of thinning down the metal barriers of Cu interconnects or replacing Cu with Ru at the local level on PDN and circuit performance. We observed that the design frequency improves by 66% by thinning down the metal barriers and by 58.3% by replacing local Cu interconnects with Ru for a given IR drop budget.