VLSI Design Challenges for Gigascale Integration

Abstract

VLSI system performance increased by five orders of magnitude in the last three decades, made possible by continued technology scaling, improving transistor performance to increase frequency, increasing integration capacity to realize complex architectures, and reducing energy consumed per logic operation to keep power dissipation within limit. The technology treadmill will continue, providing integration capacity of billions of transistors; however, power and energy consumption will be the barriers. Performance at any cost will not be an option in the future; VLSI systems will have to emphasize performance delivered in a given power envelope, with complexity limited by energy efficiency. This paper discusses potential solutions in process technology, circuits, and microarchitectures to exploit future gigascale integration capacity. The system on a chip (SOC) concept will help integrate diverse functional blocks, providing valued performance. The paper concludes with recommendations to the VLSI system designers on how to exploit these emerging paradigms.