Miniaturized Transistors

What is the future of CMOS? Sustaining increased transistor densities along the path of Moore's Law has become increasingly challenging with limited power budgets, interconnect bandwidths, and fabrication capabilities. In the last decade alone, transistors have undergone significant design makeovers; from planar transistors of ten years ago, technological advancements have accelerated to today's FinFETs, which hardly resemble their bulky ancestors. FinFETs could potentially take us to the 5-nm node, but what comes after it? From gate-all-around devices to single electron transistors and two-dimensional semiconductors, a torrent of research is being carried out in order to design the next transistor generation, engineer the optimal materials, improve the fabrication technology, and properly model future devices. We invite insight from investigators and scientists in the field to showcase their work in this Special Issue with research papers, short communications, and review articles that focus on trends in micro- and nanotechnology from fundamental research to applications

Crosstalk computing: circuit techniques, implementation and potential applications

Title from PDF of title [age viewed January 32, 2022Dissertation advisor: Mostafizur RahmanVitaIncludes bibliographical references (page 117-136)Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Computing and Engineering. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2020This work presents a radically new computing concept for digital Integrated Circuits (ICs), called Crosstalk Computing. The conventional CMOS scaling trend is facing device scaling limitations and interconnect bottleneck. The other primary concern of miniaturization of ICs is the signal-integrity issue due to Crosstalk, which is the unwanted interference of signals between neighboring metal lines. The Crosstalk is becoming inexorable with advancing technology nodes. Traditional computing circuits always tries to reduce this Crosstalk by applying various circuit and layout techniques. In contrast, this research develops novel circuit techniques that can leverage this detrimental effect and convert it astutely to a useful feature. The Crosstalk is engineered into a logic computation principle by leveraging deterministic signal interference for innovative circuit implementation. This research work presents a comprehensive circuit framework for Crosstalk Computing and derives all the key circuit elements that can enable this computing model. Along with regular digital logic circuits, it also presents a novel Polymorphic circuit approach unique to Crosstalk Computing. In Polymorphic circuits, the functionality of a circuit can be altered using a control variable. Owing to the multi-functional embodiment in polymorphic-circuits, they find many useful applications such as reconfigurable system design, resource sharing, hardware security, and fault-tolerant circuit design, etc. This dissertation shows a comprehensive list of polymorphic logic gate implementations, which were not reported previously in any other work. It also performs a comparison study between Crosstalk polymorphic circuits and existing polymorphic approaches, which are either inefficient due to custom non-linear circuit styles or propose exotic devices. The ability to design a wide range of polymorphic logic circuits (basic and complex logics) compact in design and minimal in transistor count is unique to Crosstalk Computing, which leads to benefits in the circuit density, power, and performance. The circuit simulation and characterization results show a 6x improvement in transistor count, 2x improvement in switching energy, and 1.5x improvement in performance compared to counterpart implementation in CMOS circuit style. Nevertheless, the Crosstalk circuits also face issues while cascading the circuits; this research analyzes all the problems and develops auxiliary circuit techniques to fix the problems. Moreover, it shows a module-level cascaded polymorphic circuit example, which also employs the auxiliary circuit techniques developed. For the very first time, it implements a proof-of-concept prototype Chip for Crosstalk Computing at TSMC 65nm technology and demonstrates experimental evidence for runtime reconfiguration of the polymorphic circuit. The dissertation also explores the application potentials for Crosstalk Computing circuits. Finally, the future work section discusses the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) challenges and proposes an appropriate design flow; besides, it also discusses ideas for the efficient implementation of Crosstalk Computing structures. Thus, further research and development to realize efficient Crosstalk Computing structures can leverage the comprehensive circuit framework developed in this research and offer transformative benefits for the semiconductor industry.Introduction and Motivation -- More Moore and Relevant Beyond CMOS Research Directions -- Crosstalk Computing -- Crosstalk Circuits Based on Perception Model -- Crosstalk Circuit Types -- Cascading Circuit Issues and Sollutions -- Existing Polymorphic Circuit Approaches -- Crosstalk Polymorphic Circuits -- Comparison and Benchmarking of Crosstalk Gates -- Practical Realization of Crosstalk Gates -- Poential Applications -- Conclusion and Future Wor

3D Logic Cells Design and Results Based on Vertical NWFET Technology Including Tied Compact Model

International audienceGate-all-around Vertical Nanowire Field Effect Transistors (VNWFET) are emerging devices, which are well suited to pursue scaling beyond lateral scaling limitations around 7 nm. This work explores the relative merits and drawbacks of the technology in the context of logic cell design. We describe a junctionless nanowire technology and associated compact model, which accurately describes fabricated device behavior in all regions of operations for transistors based on between 16 and 625 parallel nanowires of diameters between 22 and 50 nm. We used this model to simulate the projected performance of inverter logic gates based on passive load, active load and complementary topologies and to carry out a performance exploration for the number of nanowires in transistors. In terms of compactness, through a dedicated full 3D layout design, we also demonstrate a 48% reduction in lateral dimensions for the complementary structure with respect to 7 nm FinFET-based inverters

3D logic cells design and results based on Vertical NWFET technology including tied compact model

International audienceGate-all-around Vertical Nanowire Field Effect Transistors (VNWFET) are emerging devices, which are well suited to pursue scaling beyond lateral scaling limitations around 7nm. This work explores the relative merits and drawbacks of the technology in the context of logic cell design. We describe a junctionless nanowire technology and associated compact model, which accurately describes fabricated device behavior in all regions of operations for transistors based on between 16 and 625 parallel nanowires of diameters between 22 and 50nm. We used this model to simulate the projected performance of inverter logic gates based on passive load, active load and complementary topologies and carry out an performance exploration for the number of nanowires in transistors. In terms of compactness, through a dedicated full 3D layout design, we also demonstrate a 1.4x reduction in lateral dimensions for the complementary structure with respect to 7nm FinFET-based inverters