Reliable Power Grid Network Design Framework Considering EM Immortalities for Multi-Segment Wires

This paper presents a new power grid network design and optimization technique that considers the new EM immortality constraint due to EM void saturation volume for multi-segment interconnects. Void may grow to its saturation volume without changing the wire resistance significantly. However, this phenomenon was ignored in existing EM-aware optimization methods. By considering this new effect, we can remove more conservativeness in the EM-aware on-chip power grid design. Along with recently proposed nucleation phase immortality constraint for multi-segment wires, we show that both EM immortality constraints can be naturally integrated into the existing programming based power grid optimization framework. To further mitigate the overly conservative problem of existing immortality-constrained optimization methods, we further explore two strategies: first we size up failed wires to meet one of the immorality conditions subject to design rules; second, we consider the EM-induced aging effects on power supply networks for a target lifetime, which allows some short-lifetime wires to fail and optimizes the rest of the wires. Numerical results on a number of IBM-format power grid networks demonstrate that the new method can reduce more power grid area compared to the existing EM-immortality constrained optimizations. Furthermore, the new method can optimize power grids with nucleated wires, which would not be possible with the existing methods.