Survey and Preview on Studies of Electro-thermal(ET) Analysis

With IC scaling into nanometer era,integration and working frequency have been soaring up,which not only improves IC performance,but also largely elevates power consumption. As a direct result of deteriorated power consumption,supply current and power density are obliged to increase. Furthermore,supply voltage is drawn down by swollen supply current while die temperature increases owing to higher power density,which in turn stretches circuit delay and causes performance deterioration. Thus in IC design,it is imperative to implement electro-thermal (ET) analyses including power analysis,power/ground (P/G) network analysis,and three dimension (3D) thermal analysis. And ET coupling effect can amplify leakage power as die becomes hotter. Meanwhile,nanometer technologies cause rampant process variations (PV). Both PVs and ET coupling complicate ET analyses. As to ET analyses of power consumption,supply voltage,and die temperature,the paper underlines its importance and surveys the state of this art. Moreover,it widely previews the challenges to ET analyses in nanometer IC design suffering rampant PVs.