Optimized method for thermal through silicon via placement with non-uniform heat sources in 3-D-IC

Abstract

In the past few years, thermal through silicon via (TTSV) has been experimentally investigated as an effective heat dissipation path. Although a lot of heat dissipation-related issues have been solved in three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D-IC), there are neglections in TTSV placement with non-uniform heat sources so far. In this study, a unique optimization is proposed to locate TTSV while effectively alleviating hot spots in 3D-IC. The thermal dissipation of non-uniform heat sources are studied using the finite element method. The simulation results show that the minimum temperature is reduced by 2.1% compared with peak temperature in the single-layer chip, and by 1.9% in the three-layer chip.