Industry Expert Blogs

In this, the second part of a two-part series we delve further into defining worst case, this time focusing specifically on device performance.

In the last blog we talked about the steady increase in power density per unit silicon area and how worst case is definitely getting worse. We discussed how in each new FinFET node the dynamic conditions within a chip are changing and becoming more complex in terms of process speeds, thermal activity and supply variation.

Worst Case Performance

Today there is no clear “worst case”. Worst case is very application, design and customer specific. Different applications may have different worst case temperature, voltage and RC corners and the art is in optimizing and not under or over specifying the guard bands.

For FinFET processes we see increased gate capacitance. Interconnect resistances are increasing with each node and track to track spacing is reducing, which means increased interconnect capacitance. Temperature inversion for some but not all types of transistors can mean certain types of transistor usually with higher threshold voltages become unexpectedly faster at higher temperatures/lower supply voltages, whereas transistors on the same chip designed with low threshold voltages may do the opposite and reduce in speed under the same conditions. Worst case then depends on which type of transistor dominates critical paths within the chip.

Process variations are now so large that designing for worst case and including wide guard bands is no longer seen as a valid approach. It simply leaves too much of the performance advantages of moving to a smaller node under-utilised. New approaches are needed which minimize the guard bands and optimise supply voltages on a per chip basis. At a first level, data gained from sensing the supply voltage directly at the logic blocks on chip can be used to optimize the PMIC supply voltages. But more sophisticated schemes such as voltage scaling involve optimization on a per die basis.

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