Title:  Design and Tool Solutions for Energy-efficient Reliable Monolithic 3D Ics

Committee: 

Dr. Lim, Advisor 

Dr. Raychowdhury, Chair

Dr. Mukhopadhyay

Abstract:

The objective of the proposed research is to analyze and identify the benefits and challenges of energy-efficient and reliable monolithic 3D (M3D) ICs, and to develop physical design and tool solutions to address the challenges. The physical design and tool challenges of M3D ICs are addressed with categorizing them into three major projects, energy-efficient M3D ICs, M3D implementation flow, and reliable M3D ICs. In the first project, energy benefits of M3D ICs are analyzed, and optimization methodologies are presented to maximize the benefits in two approaches, by reducing power consumption and by improving performance. In the second project, a new M3D IC implementation flow is devised based on the observations in the first project. For the last project, reliability issues of M3D integration are addressed, which includes power-supply integrity and thermal challenges.