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 Bond two fully

and fabricate TFTs processed wafers
together.
-not practial for 3D circuits
due to high temp of melting
-Similar Electrical Properties
polysillicon

Epitaxially grow a
single cystal Si

Low Temp
alternative to SE.

-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

-Suffers from Low carrier

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

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.

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 by min-cut partitioning

3D Global Routing
Inter-wafer 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 interplane 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.
Wires within a Region are fully contained or terminate at a pin on
the region boundry.

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.
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