On-Chip Communication Architectures

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(greater than 10 GHz). At such frequencies, these inductive effects can

negatively infl uence performance on CNTs, which needs to be addressed

when comparing CNTs to Cu interconnects in future technologies.

13.4 SUMMARY

Traditional on-chip metallic interconnects are beginning to show their limita-

tions due to a number of reasons: high resistivity (due to electron grain and grain

boundary scatterings, leading to large propagation delays, and poor performance),

low reliability, and high susceptibility to electromigration (at high current densi-

ties) with technology and interconnect scaling. Consequently, novel on-chip inter-

connection ...