A system for electromigration analysis in VLSI metal patterns

The authors describe a CAD (computer-aided design) system for reliability analysis of VLSI CMOS circuits, with emphasis on electromigration estimation in power and ground metal lines. The system consists of three main components: extraction of circuit netlist and parameters and RC line models from layout; calculation of expected or average current waveforms drawn by the circuit at the contacts of the buses; and computation of average current densities in sections of the power and ground buses for electromigration estimation. The system tools have been integrated around the Berkeley OCT/VEM design framework system.<
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