In this paper, we present a comprehensive study of the unique thermal behavior in monolithic 3D ICs. In particular, we study the impact of the thin inter-layer dielectric (ILD) between the device tiers on vertical thermal coupling. In addition, we develop a fast and accurate compact full-chip thermal analysis model based on non-linear regression technique. Our model is extremely fast and highly accurate with an error of less than 5%. This model is incorporated into a thermal-aware 3D-floorplanner that runs without significant runtime overhead. We observe up to 22% reduction in the maximum temperature with insignificant area and performance overhead.
Monolithic three-dimensional integrated chips (3D ICs) are an emerging technology that offers an integration density that is some orders of magnitude higher than the conventional through-silicon-via (TSV)-based 3D ICs. This is due to a sequential integration process that enables extremely small monolithic inter-tier vias (MIVs). For a monolithic 3D memory, we first explore the static random-access memory (SRAM) design. Next, for digital logic, we explore several design styles. The first is transistor-level, which is a design style unique to monolithic 3D ICs that are enabled by the ultra-high-density of MIVs. We also explore gate-level and block-level design styles, which are available for TSV-based 3D ICs. For each of these design styles, we present techniques to obtain the graphic database system (GDS) layouts, and perform a signoff-quality performance and power analysis. We also discuss various challenges facing monolithic 3D ICs, such as achieving 50% footprint reduction over two-dimensional (2D) ICs, routing congestion, power delivery network design, and thermal issues. Finally, we present design techniques to overcome these challenges.
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