Exploring early design tradeoffs in 3DIC

This The key to gaining substantial benefit from the use of 3DIC technology is to create 3D specific designs that do more than recast a 2D optimal design into the third dimension. This paper explores some of the approaches to creating 3D specific designs and the CAD tools that can help in that exploration. The power advantages of 3D design are illustrated in details. Results from different partitioning approaches (function, modular and circuit) are presented, together with early results from a thermal pathfinding tool.