Electromigration Design Rule aware Global and Detailed Routing Algorithm

Electromigration (EM) in interconnects is becoming a major concern as the scaling of technology nodes. Electromigration affects chip performance and signal integrity seriously by generating shorts or opens, and then shortens the life-time of integrated circuits. In this paper, we propose an EM-aware routing algorithm in both global and detailed routing stages. Based on physics-based EM modeling and analysis, EM issue is modeled as physical design rule. In global routing stage, an efficient EM-aware Mazerouting algorithm is implemented. An concurrent EM-aware detailed router is then proposed based on multi-commodity flow method. Experimental results show that comparing with general routing algorithm, the proposed EM-aware algorithm could effectively reduce EM risk of signal wires by 92% with slight increasing of wire length and via count.