Effect of Repeater Size and Temperature on Functional Crosstalk Noise and Delay in Capacitively Coupled Interconnects

Abstract

With continuous downscaling of integrated circuits into deep submicron and nanometer
regime, operating at high frequencies, it has become most important to determine the reliability and
system performance in on-chip interconnects. This paper presents the analysis of functional crosstalk
in capacitively coupled interconnects. The impact of driver size and temperature on the performance
of coupled lines is analyzed and studied. In the analysis, single and cascaded repeaters are used to
drive the coupled interconnect lines. From the analysis, it is found that the peak positive forward
crosstalk noise of cascaded repeater driven interconnect is 33.8% less than the peak positive forward
crosstalk noise of minimum sized single repeater driven interconnect. Also, for the combined
temperature range of commercial and military applications varying from -55oC to 125oC, it is
analyzed that the propagation delay of the coupled interconnect increases with increase in
temperature. The analysis is carried out using geometric dimensions and extracted impedance
parameters of copper interconnect using PTM models for 45nm technology node.