A vectorless framework for power grid electromigration checking

Electromigration (EM) in the on-die metal lines has re-emerged as a significant concern in modern VLSI circuits. The higher levels of temperature on die and the very large number of metal lines, coupled with the conservatism inherent in traditional EM checking strategies, have led to a situation where trying to guarantee EM reliability often leads to unacceptably conservative designs that may not meet the area or performance specs. Due to unidirectional currents, this problem is most significant in the power and ground grids. Thus, this work is aimed at reducing the pessimism in EM prediction for power/ground grids. There are two sources for the high pessimism: 1) the use of the traditional series model for EM checking and 2) pessimistic assumptions about the chip workload and the corresponding supply currents. To address this problem, we propose a framework for EM checking that allows users to specify conditions-of-use type constraints that help capture realistic chip workload and which includes the use of a novel mesh model for EM prediction in the grid, instead of the traditional series model.