Thermal Effects in Integrated Circuits

摘要：集成电路中的热效应随着集成电路中封装的元件越来越多，单位面积产生的热量也越来越大，这就对将这些热量传递给环境并保持芯片冷却的散热机制提出了强烈的要求。趋势表明，在今天的设计实践和目前的经济模式下的包装成本，芯片上的温度将从一代技术上升到下一代。由此产生的热应力将降低电路的可靠性和性能，并可能导致芯片速度和功率的不可预测性达到不可接受的水平。目前的技术使用各种简单的方法来控制电路的功耗而不是温度，但这些方法无法很好地适应未来的技术，特别是随着芯片进一步小型化，热问题预计会变得更加严重。现在必须将温度作为首要的设计目标，这也是本研究的目标。本文的工作包括两个方面：首先，将开发模拟技术来确定芯片上的温度分布；其次，将研究减少这些变化影响的优化方法。这项工作通过使摩尔定律曲线持续进步来支持美国半导体行业，研究活动将有助于培养该领域的学生。此外，在本研究中开发的一些通用仿真/解决方案技术可能会对集成电路领域以外的领域产生影响，因为这些问题经常出现在科学和工程的许多其他背景中。

ABSTRACT0541367Sachin SapatnekarU of MinnThermal Effects in Integrated CircuitsAs more components are packed on to an integrated circuit, a larger amount of heat is generated per unit area, placing strong demands on heat removal mechanisms that transmit this heat to the environment and keep the chip cool. Trends show that under today's design practices and the current economic model for packaging costs, on-chip temperatures will rise from one technology generation to the next. The resulting thermal stresses will degrade the reliability and performance of the circuit, and can result in unacceptable levels of unpredictability in the speed and power of a chip. Current-day techniques use a variety of simple approaches that control the power dissipation of the circuit rather than its temperature, but these will not scale well to future technologies, particularly since the thermal problem is projected to become even more acute as chips are further miniaturized. It is now imperative to consider temperature as a first-class design objective, and this is the goal of this research. There are two aspects to the proposed work: first, simulation techniques will be developed to determine the on-chip temperature distribution, and second, optimization methods for reducing the effects of these variations will be researched. This work supports the US semiconductor industry by enabling the continued progress along the Moore's law curve, and the research activities will help train students in this field. Moreover, some general purpose simulation/solution techniques developed in this research could have an impact beyond the field of integrated circuits, since these problems frequently arise in numerous other contexts in science and engineering.