Title:  Electronic Design Automation Solutions and Design Tradeoffs for Emerging Heterogeneous 2.5D and 3D ICs

Committee:

Dr. Sung-Kyu Lim, ECE, Chair, Advisor

Dr. Madhavan Swaminathan, ECE

Dr. Saibal Mukhopadhyay, ECE

Dr. Tushar Krishna, ECE

Dr. Hyesoon Kim, CoC

Abstract: The objectives of this dissertation span from addressing the shortcomings of 2D ICs including the scaling and the design complexity to design and CAD methodologies for emerging 2.5D and 3D integrations and observation on the design tradeoffs between technologies in each category. In the first part, we present a vertically-integrated EDA flow for an interposer-based 2.5D IC design which covers and fully automates the whole design phases of architecture, circuit and package, and study the tradeoffs on various 2.5D integration options including power delivery scheme and interposer technologies. We also present chiplet/interposer co-design flow for 2.5D PDN optimization to improve the power delivery in 2.5D system. In the second theme, we conduct the study on PPA and reliability tradeoffs between the state-of-the-art 3D integration technologies with the quantitative comparison. Moreover, we observe the impact of back-side PDN in micro-bumping 3D integration which improves the voltage-drop in 3D integration. Finally, we present a test-aware monolithic 3D IC design methodology using a carbon nanotube FET (CNFET), which is a BEOL transistor, enabling the effective defect screening and quality assurance of 3D interconnections.