Thermal-driven multilevel routing for 3D ICs

3D IC has a great potential for improving circuit performance and degree of integration. It is also an attractive platform for system-on-chip or system-in-package solutions. A critical issue in 3D circuit design is heat dissipation. In this paper we propose an efficient 3D multilevel routing approach that includes a novel through-the-silicon via (TS-via) planning algorithm. The proposed approach features an adaptive lumped resistive thermal model and a two-step multilevel TS-via planning scheme. Experimental results show that with multilevel TS-via planning, the thermal-driven approach can reduce the maximum temperature to the required temperature with reasonable wirelength increase. Compared to a post processing approach for dummy TS-via insertion, to achieve the same required temperature, our approach uses 80% fewer TS-vias. To our knowledge, this proposed approach is the first thermal-driven 3D routing algorithm.