A tool flow for predicting system level timing failures due to interconnect reliability degradation

The continuous scaling of feature dimensions and the introduction of new dielectric materials is pushing the interconnects closer to their reliability limits. Degradation mechanisms are becoming more pronounced, making the interconnect lifetime a challenge at the level of process qualification. Moreover, these mechanisms exhibit new properties, like gradual degradation of electrical parameters instead of abrupt breakdowns phenomena. As a result, it becomes more likely that systems will fail because one of their transistors or wires becomes gradually too slow. These soft failures are not captured by existing tools. The methodology introduced in this paper estimates the impact of two dominant interconnect degradation mechanisms (EM & TDDB) on the total system performance. This constitutes a first step toward system level driven reliability aware design.