Interconnect Focus Center Research Program
Program Themes
The seven research themes that will be persued are:
- System Architecture
- New frontier explorations of novel instruction set architectures
- Novel 2-D and 3-D microarchitectures that make communication more visible to the programmer and the compiler
- Respond to the wiring imperative keep interconnects short
- Physical design tools
- A new frontier library of 3-D interconnect cells, akin to familiar libraries of standard logic cells, that can be combined to generate accurate models for electrical analysis of complex multi-level interconnect networks
- Novel communications mechanisms
- New frontier on-chip heteroepitaxial photon sources, optoelectronic polysilicon waveguides and polycrystaline SiGe modulators and detectors for photonic clock distribution and data communication
- Optical wavelength division multiplexing and microwave RF techniques to enhance chip I/O bandwidth
- Chip-To-Module interconnects
- Wafer level batch packaging technology to extend end-of-the-line batch processes to include all final lead attachment and encapsulation, extending eventually to heatsinks, allowing the production of fully packaged dice that are tested prior to wafer separation
- Materials and processing
- New frontier explorations of advanced active 3-D interconnect concepts
- Organic engineered materials for electronic and optical structures
- Novel models for the effects of surface and grain boundary scattering on the resistivity of sub-100nm thin films
- Process modeling, simulation, and technology assessment
- Development of new frontier process models for spatial variations of interconnect parameters
- 3-D predictive models for atomic arrangements, point defects and grain boundaries
- Enabling the simulation of properties for performance, reliability, and manufacturability, for example, projection of the differences between the chemical and physical properties of PECVD materials formed on vertical vs. horizontal surfaces of wafers due to different ion bombardment flux
- Reliability and characterization
- New frontier explorations of markedly improved novel physical models for electromigration that account for the impact of nucleation spot density on the formation of voids in metal interconnect patterns
- Novel material characterization techniques using microspectroscopy
- New reliability projection software tools for use during chip layout