A Linear-Time Algorithm for Steady-State Analysis of Electromigration in General Interconnects

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast, linear-time physics-based algorithm for analyzing electromigration in complex interconnect structures, improving reliability assessment in advanced technology nodes.

Contribution

It presents a novel, exact, physics-based method that efficiently analyzes electromigration in general interconnects, surpassing traditional approaches in speed and applicability.

Findings

The method is linear in the number of metal segments.

It accurately matches more expensive numerical simulations.

It can analyze large, complex interconnect networks quickly.

Abstract

Electromigration (EM) is a key reliability issue in deeply scaled technology nodes. Traditional EM methods first filter immortal wires using the Blech criterion, and then perform EM analysis based on Black's equation on the remaining wires. The Blech criterion is based on finding the steady-state stress in a two-terminal wire segment, but most on-chip structures are considerably more complex. Current-density-based assessment methodologies, i.e., Black's equation and the Blech criterion, which are predominantly used to detect EM-susceptible wires, do not capture the physics of EM, but alternative physics-based methods involve the solution of differential equations and are slow. This paper uses first principles, based on solving fundamental stress equations that relate electron wind and back-stress forces to the stress evolution in an interconnect, and devises a technique that analyzes any general tree or mesh interconnect structure to test for immortality. The resulting solution is extremely computationally efficient and its computation time is linear in the number of metal segments. Two variants of the method are proposed: a current-density-based method that requires traversals of the interconnect graph, and a voltage-based formulation negates the need for any traversals. The methods are applied to large interconnect networks for determining the steady-state stress at all nodes and test all segments of each network for immortality. The proposed model is applied to a variety of tree and mesh structures and is demonstrated to be fast. By construction, it is an exact solution and it is demonstrated to match much more computationally expensive numerical simulations.