Thermally-coupled IC interconnect networks

Analytical, steady-state temperature trajectories on highly coupled interconnects can be found using a symbolic solution method, with little incremental computational cost. This method is used to examine the influence of vias, pitch, linewidth variation, and anisotropic thermal conductance due to porosity variation on the coupled temperature trajectories in a regular, two-layer interconnect grid. Temperature and its sensitivity to process variation in low-k dielectric are seen to be topology dependent, requiring thermal network analysis.