Electronic Packaging Science and Technology

7Performance, Power, Thermal, and Reliability

7.1 Introduction

In this chapter, we introduce the metrics we usually apply when designing ICs, and they are conformed from generations to generations of designs. When we design the corresponding packages, they will be the first to be referenced. After the introduction of general guidelines in those metrics, we will describe them in detail. We first discuss the issues in performance and power dissipation, two of the most important metrics. We introduce some popular and effective low‐power architectures such as DVFS and voltage islands. Then followed by thermal management and reliability concerns, they are closely related to the prior two major metrics, thus will be connected to the package designs in modern electronics.

Before we detail the metrics, we need to introduce the basics for transistors, especially the field‐effect transistor, so that we know how we make the transistors work. In order to make all computations happen, except for the compute circuits (CPU), we need a larger component to store the data ready for computation: the memories. Afterward, we can discuss the challenges we face. Among all the challenges in IC design, performance is always the first‐order effect to consider. Since the invention of IC and the planar manufacturing, we have been in a roller‐coaster trip in fabricating chips for decades. In order to conform the protocols of evolving communication systems or to fulfill the functions in various electronics ...