ITEM - A TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENT ELECTROMIGRATION RELIABILITY DIAGNOSISTOOL

In this paper, we present a new electromigration reliability diagnosis tool (iTEM) for CMOS VLSI circuits. Unlike previous electromigration reliability tools, iTEM can estimate the interconnect temperature rise due to joule heating and heat conduction from the substrate using a n ewly developed lumped thermal model, By including the temperature effe ct, iTEM provides much more accurate electromigration reliability diag nosis. Moreover, it is computationally efficient, and can analyze circ uit layouts containing tens of thousands of transistors on a desktop w orkstation.