Deep-submicron design challenges for a dual-core 64b UltraSPARC microprocessor implementation

A processor core, originally designed in a 0.5/spl mu/m Al process, is redesigned for a 0.13/spl mu/m Cu process to create a dual-core processor with 1MB integrated L2 cache, offering an efficient performance to power ratio for compute-dense server applications. Circuit design challenges, including negative bias temperature instability (NBTI), leakage, coupling noise and intra die process variation are discussed.