Precision In Depth: Extraction Workflows For CFETs And Buried Power Rails


By Karen Chow, Sheetal Veronica, and Kunjesh Agashiwala In the heart of Manhattan, where land is scarce but demand is infinite, architects had to rethink the city grid. Instead of sprawling outward, they built upward with skyscrapers and carved subways below ground, inventing a “3D” city. Today’s chip designers face a similar dilemma: the two-dimensional plane of planar scaling is near... » read more

Beyond BPD: Backside Clock and Signal Routing for Sub-3nm (UT Austin, Intel)


A new technical paper titled "Beyond Backside Power: Backside Signal Routing as Technology Booster for Standard Cell Scaling" was published by researchers from University of Texas at Austin and Intel. Abstract "Advances in process technology enabling backside metals and contacts offer new Design-Technology Co-Optimization (DTCO) opportunities to further enhance power, performance, and area ... » read more

Extending Copper Interconnects To 2nm


Transistor scaling is reaching a tipping point at 3nm, where nanosheet FETs will likely replace finFETs to meet performance, power, area, and cost (PPAC) goals. A significant architectural change is similarly being evaluated for copper interconnects at 2nm, a move that would reconfigure the way power is delivered to transistors. This approach relies on so-called buried power rails (BPRs) and... » read more

Introducing Nanosheets Into Complementary-Field Effect Transistors (CFETs)


In our November 2019 blog [1], we discussed using virtual fabrication (SEMulator3D) to benchmark different process integration options for Complementary-FET (CFET) fabrication. CFET is a CMOS architecture that was proposed by imec in 2018 [2]. This architecture contains p- and n-MOSFET structures built on top of each other, instead of having them located side-by-side. In our previous blog, we r... » read more