Comprehensive Physical Design Flow Incorporating 3D Connections for Monolithic 3D ICs

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a comprehensive physical design flow specifically tailored for Monolithic 3D (M3D) integration, a transformative technology for high-density and highperformance IC design in the post-Moore era. Unlike conventional RTL-to-GDS flows that heavily focus on utilizing commercial 2D design tools, our design flow delves deep into the suboptimal issues inherent in implementing cross-tier connections, which are not adequately addressed by 2D tools. Our proposed flow provides seamless optimization for such connections through three key design stages following pseudo-3D placement: (1) 3D routing-aware tier partitioning that induces subtle imbalances in cell area distribution between tiers to maximize the utilization of monolithic inter-tier vias (MIVs); (2) MIV-guided detailed placement that optimizes the placement by strategically utilizing reserved whitespace for enhanced 3D connections; and (3) MIV-aware 3D routing that takes full advantage of the finetuned placement result. Experiment results using open-source benchmark circuits in advanced 7nm technology nodes show that our proposed M3D design flow achieves up to 9.92% wirelength reduction per 3D net, resulting in 76.70% improvement in worst negative slack, and an equivalently improved 60.28% energy-delay-product over the state-of-the-art M3D design flow on average even with challenging design conditions. We provide valuable insights into various factors for efficient and high-quality M3D IC design with effective solutions.