Designers of high-speed silicon chips have often had to compromise on performance
levels for their integrated circuit designs because of physical weaknesses appearing
during design verification or even in production. This has necessitated building
redundancy into chip designs to allow for the imperfect environments of production
and use that vary from the ideal of the design workbench. Issues such as voltage
variations, thermal heat effects, electrostatic discharge, internal radiation
and crosstalk can all downgrade the performance and reliability of a perfect
design.
With circuit detail resolutions now descending to 65 and 45 nm, such problems
are becoming ever more acute. All too often, chip designs pass traditional checks,
yet fail when manufactured in silicon, forcing design teams to turn to costly
diagnostic and repair methods or – worse still – throw the chip
away.
Three major European semiconductor manufacturers – Infineon, NXP Semiconductors
and STMicroelectronics – got together in ROBIN to define and deal with
such problems early in the design phase, thus avoiding problems further down
the development flow or in the production phase. They were joined by a laboratory
with strong expertise in quantum physics and four electronic design automation
(EDA) companies.
Favouring first silicon success
“Our most important target was to favour ‘first silicon success’
without affecting the performance of the circuits,” explains project leader
Philippe Garcin of STMicroelectronics, which started ROBIN. The other partners
joined either because they had similar problems as in the case of Infineon and
NXP, new solutions they intended to put on the open market in the case of the
EDA companies or long-term solutions in mind as far as the research organisation
was concerned.
The chipmaking partners formalised the problems, specified software tools,
models and design flows with strong interoperability, and proposed complementary
test cases. Together with the EDA partners, they built new solutions that are
now available for exploitation in line with these specifications.
A key objective was to optimise the design approach to both existing 130 and
90 nm and future 65 and 45 nm technologies by defining the most efficient trade-offs
between circuit robustness in terms of yield and reliability, and efficient
use of technology affecting performance, density and power consumption. The
challenge was to maintain or enhance existing performance levels, while improving
design reliability and robustness.
Taking a bottom-up approach
“We took a bottom-up approach, from technology to chip level and then
to system-in-package (SIP) level,” says Garcin. “We examined a wide
range of issues, from power and substrate effects through signal interference
to manufacturing cost.”
While applications require smaller voltages and higher frequencies, miniaturisation
adds new risks of voltage distortions. To reduce design iterations and avoid
unreliability or failures, ROBIN aimed to prevent these effects very early in
the design flow. The project addressed signal corruption in power distribution
and on the substrate, and took into account the effects of interconnect crosstalk
and natural radiations.
The MEDEA+ project attained its goal of obtaining the best from available and
emerging technologies by defining optimal trade-offs between circuit robustness
in terms of yield and reliability, and efficient use of technology – performance,
density and power consumption – down to 45 nm. For example, on inter-block
couplings, ROBIN allowed a decrease of simulation time by factor of four in
very critical radio-frequency circuits.
As support for the microelectronics industry, the ROBIN partners developed
the basic concept for a unified chip/package data exchange (CPX) environment.
The two industry standards – ESDA and JEDEC – used to measure electrostatic
discharges were both evaluated and discussed. In the course of the project,
the benefits of ROBIN were demonstrated in automotive, telecommunications and
multimedia applications. Co-operation was highly successful within the different
work groups.
Co-operation key to European success
As a result of ROBIN, partners' competitiveness was much improved, in particular
for high reliability applications such as networking and medical. “Coming
together within the MEDEA+ framework made an important difference,” explains
Garcin. “At the end of the project, among its 50 outcomes, about 80% were
available for exploitation: the same results would not have been possible –
either in terms of quantity or in terms of quantity – if the partners
had worked alone.
“By aligning their requests, the industrial partners were able to prepare
concerted specifications for their EDA tool providers. Thanks to the standards-based
approach used in ROBIN, it is technically possible to share the results of the
project across European industry – and the consortium is already taking
the developments further in a new research project.”
Posted November 12th, 2009
