Thermally-aware modeling and performance evaluation for single-walled carbon nanotube-based interconnects for future high performance integrated circuits

Given the performance and reliability limits of conventional copper interconnects in the tens of nanometer regime, carbon-nanotube (CNT) based interconnects emerge as a potential reliable alternative for future high performance VLSI industry. In this paper, we present an accurate thermally-aware model for single-walled carbon-nanotube (SWCNT) based interconnects. Our thermally-aware model is an integration of temperature-dependent electrical parasitics model and thermal equivalent circuit that captures both self-heating and heat conduction phenomena. We verify the accuracy of our electro-thermal model against recently reported experimental measurements. By leveraging the presented electro-thermal model, we present a simulation platform to estimate the performance of SWCNT-based interconnects under different temperature conditions. Our thermally-aware model achieves improvement in the delay estimation accuracy of about 51.3% on average. Based on our simulation results, SWCNT-based interconnects offer more than 5×reduction in delay at dimensions of about 10-20 nm for 27- 127 °C temperature range.