Measurement and Analysis of a High-Speed TSV Channel

Using high-speed through-silicon via (TSV) channels is a potential means of utilizing 3-D interconnections to realize considerable high-bandwidth throughput in vertically stacked and laterally distributed integrated circuits. However, although the TSV and a silicon interposer in a high-speed TSV channel lead to a significant decrease of the interconnect length, the received digital signal after transmission through a TSV channel is still degraded at a high data-rate due to the nonidealities of the channel. Therefore, an analysis of the signal integrity in a high-speed TSV channel is necessary. In this paper, a single-ended high-speed TSV channel is measured and analyzed in the frequency-domain and the time-domain. To measure the high-speed TSV channel, two types of test vehicles are fabricated, consisting of TSVs and interposers. With these test vehicles, the channel losses are measured in the frequency-domain up to 20 GHz, and eye-diagrams are measured in the time-domain at 1 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s. Based on these measurements, the channel loss, characteristic impedance, and reflection of the high-speed TSV channel are analyzed and compared to those of the channel in multichip module (MCM) package. Because of the losses from the silicon-substrate and the thin oxide-layer used in the TSVs, the overall loss of the high-speed TSV channel is higher than that of the MCM channel. In addition, the characteristic impedance of the high-speed TSV channel is frequency-dependent, whereas that of the MCM channel is frequency-independent. Moreover, in contrast to the MCM channel, the reflection is negligible in the high-speed TSV channel because the channel is too short and the losses are too high to be affected by the reflection. Finally, the design guidance of a high-speed TSV channel for wide bandwidth is determined based on the analysis of the measurements.