Compact physical models for multilevel interconnect crosstalk in gigascale integration (GSI)

For the first time, compact physical models are derived for crosstalk noise of coplanar resistance-inductance-capacitance lines in a gigascale integration (GSI) chip that simultaneously consider far and near aggressors in both the same metal level and distant metal levels. Since both the amplitude and duration of noise are important, the noise voltage-time integral can be defined as a figure-of-merit for crosstalk, and it is shown that this integral attains its maximum at the length at which the interconnect resistance becomes equal to twice the characteristic impedance. It is also shown that crosstalk can be prohibitively large if interconnects have small resistances. There is, therefore, a tradeoff between interconnect latency and crosstalk. The compact models are finally used to calculate the crosstalk noise voltage for the case that wire width is optimized by simultaneously maximizing data flux density and minimizing latency. It has been proven that by utilizing the optimal wire width for signal interconnects and twice of that for power and ground lines, the worst case peak crosstalk noise voltage becomes smaller than 0.25 V/sub dd/ for all generations of technology.