Scaling theory in modern VLSI

Discusses the scaling rules for VLSI that pertain to the total wire length and the clock speed. The analysis indicates that the total wire length is not increasing as rapidly as standard scaling theory would indicate. This results from over-scaling of the cell size reduction from one generation to the next (as predicted by Moore [1975]). However, the total wire length is still increasing at a rate that will cause significant power dissipation in the interconnects and indicates the need for new locally interconnected architectures. Moreover, the over-scaling of cell size reduction also raises the possible limitations that arise as the cell size is reduced faster than the gate length. We also discussed the effects of scaling on on-die clock speed. While gate-array clock speeds are scaling slower than the scaling rules would predict (a problem for large multi-chip architectures), clock speeds in modern VLSI chips track the scaling rule quite accurately.