Invited: Toward Accurate, Large-scale Electromigration Analysis and Optimization in Integrated Systems
This work tackles a critical reliability problem for high-performance and future heterogeneously integrated systems, but it is incremental as it reviews existing models and outlines open problems rather than presenting new solutions.
The paper addresses the challenge of electromigration (EM) reliability in integrated circuits, highlighting the limitations of current rule-based methods and the need for accurate physics-based models to enable large-scale analysis and optimization.
Electromigration, a significant lifetime reliability concern in highperformance integrated circuits, is projected to grow even more important in future heterogeneously integrated systems that will service higher current loads. Today, EM checks are primarily based on rule-based methods, but these have known limitations. In recent years, there has been remarkable progress in enabling fast EM computations based on more accurate physics-based models, but such methods have not yet moved from research to practice. This paper overviews physics-based EM models, contrasts them with empirical models, and outlines several open problems that must be solved in order to enable accurate physics-based and circuit-aware EM analysis and optimization in future integrated systems.