Scaling down of device sizes and supply voltage requires a commensurate scaling of transistor threshold voltage to maintain high performance. Such scaling leads to exponential increase in leakage current, decreased noise immunity for high speed circuits, and increased defects. In this tutorial we will present design and test techniques to combat these problems in the deep sub-micron regime for bulk, SOI and future technologies. We will consider the following issues in turn:
1. Device scaling and its impact on sub-threshold and gate leakage current, interconnects, and noise immunity 2. Low voltage circuit design under high intrinsic leakage, leakage monitoring and control techniques, effective transistor stacking, multi-threshold CMOS, dynamic threshold CMOS, SOI implications. Design of low leakage data-paths and caches. 3. SOI design - comparison with bulk, logic and memory design, asynchronous design 4. Copper, Low k, and impact of Low k on performance 5. Future technologies - Double gate fully depleted SOI, FIN FET, and 3-D SOI 6. Noise modeling and analysis for high-speed precharge-evaluate circuits such as domino. Noise tolerant circuit design styles: skewed CMOS, noise tolerant domino, layout styles for high noise immunity 7. Iddq testing of circuits with high intrinsic leakage: delta Iddq, two parameter tests. Idd waveform analysis
This course will be useful for VLSI design engineers, managers, technologists, students, professors who are actively involved in VLSI design or to those who need to spread their knowledge across multi-disciplines. The tutorial is also intended for those who would like to know new developments in this field.