Electrical loss and substrate noise coupling induced by through-silicon-vias (TSVs) in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates is characterized in frequency and time domains. A three-dimensional (3-D) test site in 45-nm CMOS SOI including copper-filled TSVs and microbumps ( μC4's) is fabricated and measured to extract the interconnect loss. Good correlation to the electrical circuit models is demonstrated up to 40 GHz. In addition to a buried oxide layer, a highly doped N+ epilayer used for deep trench devices in 22-nm CMOS SOI is considered in full-wave electromagnetic simulations. Equivalent circuit models are extracted to assess the impact of noise coupling on active circuit performance. A noise mitigation technique of using CMOS process compatible buried interface contacts is proposed and studied. Simulation results demonstrate that a low-impedance ground return path can be readily created for effective substrate noise reduction in 3-D IC design.

Substrate noise coupling induced by Through Silicon Vias in SOI substrates is modeled and analyzed in frequency- and time-domain. In addition to a buried oxide layer, a highly doped N+ epi layer used for deep trench devices is taken into account in full-wave electromagnetic simulations. Equivalent circuit models are extracted to assess the impact of noise coupling on active circuit performance. A noise mitigation technique of using CMOS process compatible buried interface contacts is proposed and studied. Simulation results demonstrate that a low impedance ground return path can be readily created for effective substrate noise reduction in 3D IC design.

A global clock distribution technique for 3D stacked chips where the clock tree and grid are shorted between strata is presented and compared with a DLL-based technique. Both permit at-speed testing of the strata before and after stack assembly. The shorting-based technique is implemented in a 2-strata eDRAM test chip using an IBM 45nm SOI 3D technology. Operation above 2.5GHz is measured.

This paper describes the architecture and implementation of the original gaming-oriented synergistic processor element (SPE) in both 90-nm and 65-nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology and introduces a new SPE implementation targeted for the high-performance computing community. The Cell Broadband Engine™ processor contains eight SPEs. The dual-issue, four-way single-instruction multiple-data processor is designed to achieve high performance per area and power and is optimized to process streaming data, simulate physical phenomena, and render objects digitally. Most aspects of data movement and instruction flow are controlled by software to improve the performance of the memory system and the core performance density. The SPE was designed as an 11-FO4 (fan-out-of-4-inverter-delay) processor using 20.9 million transistors within 14.8 mm 2 using the IBM 90-nm SOI low-k process. CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) static gates implement the majority of the logic. Dynamic circuits are used in critical areas and occupy 19% of the non-static random access memory (SRAM) area. Instruction set architecture, microarchitecture, and physical implementation are tightly coupled to achieve a compact and power-efficient design. Correct operation has been observed at up to 5.6 GHz and 7.3 GHz, respectively, in 90-nm and 65-nm SOI technology.