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Carbon Nanotubes for Interconnects pp 3–36Cite as

Overview of the Interconnect Problem

Abstract

One of the major challenges that the semiconductor industry is expected to face in the pursuit of further miniaturization of the minimum feature size in the next decade is the degrading interconnect performance. Interconnects limit the performance of integrated circuits (IC) because they add extra delay to critical paths, dissipate dynamic power, disturb signal integrity, and impose reliability concerns due to electromigration (EM) and time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB). Furthermore, variations in the interconnect features during manufacturing give rise to variations in circuit performance, which makes it increasingly difficult to predict circuit behavior at ultra-scaled technology generations. The exponential increase in the number of interconnects to be routed on a microchip requires a substantial amount of effort to be devoted to design and process optimizations and increases the cost due to the increasing number of required metal levels. All of these limitations become increasingly restrictive with dimensional scaling. In this chapter, the challenges associated with integrating the conventional copper-based interconnect technology at future technology generations are described.

Keywords

  • Power Dissipation
  • Metal Level
  • Technology Node
  • Critical Path Delay
  • Dimensional Scaling

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, OR, USA

    Ahmet Ceyhan

  2. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Azad Naeemi

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  1. Ahmet Ceyhan
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  2. Azad Naeemi
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Correspondence to Azad Naeemi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS-LIRMM/University of Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Aida Todri-Sanial

  2. CEA LITEN, Grenoble, France

    Jean Dijon

  3. University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Cassino, Italy

    Antonio Maffucci

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Ceyhan, A., Naeemi, A. (2017). Overview of the Interconnect Problem. In: Todri-Sanial, A., Dijon, J., Maffucci, A. (eds) Carbon Nanotubes for Interconnects. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29746-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29746-0_1

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