A Simulation Tool for Rapid Investigation of Trends in 3-DIC Performance and Power Consumption

In order to compare the costs and the benefits of 2-D and 3-D integrated circuits (3-DICs) technologies, a compact simulation tool for 3-DIC system evaluation and design space exploration is presented. The simulator is implemented in the MATLAB, and is composed of several modules, including a compact 3-DIC wire-length distribution, a wire pitch and repeater insertion module, a 2-D and 3-DIC power supply noise estimation module, and a finite-difference thermal simulator. The simulator is validated against published data for several commercial 2-D processors at the 65-, 45-, and 32-nm nodes. In order to quantify the benefits of both 2-D and 3-D integration approaches, a 32-nm CPU core is modeled, and the impact of several technology parameters, including interlayer dielectric material, on-chip wire material, die thickness, and cooling solution, is explored. The results suggest that the 3-D integration may provide a significant power reduction for the 32-nm test case, but more aggressive cooling solutions must be employed to maintain the same clock frequency due to the increased areal power density of the 3-D CPU.