Objectives

The primary scientific and technical objective of the THERMINATOR proposal is to develop innovative design technologies for modeling, controlling, compensating and managing temperature in semiconductor circuits and systems to be manufactured with the most advanced processes and technologies. This objective has a strategic dimension, as the capability of mastering temperature will be the basic prerequisite for both semiconductor vendors and system design houses seeking short to mid-term consolidation and growth of their market shares in business sectors such as telecom, consumer and automotive electronics, in which the European industry holds world-wide technical excellence and commercial leadership.
The R&D activities to be performed in THERMINATOR will target new modeling and simulation approaches, design techniques, methods and algorithms applicable at different stages of the design cycle and for different families of electronic devices and applications, some of which will lead to pre-competitive EDA tools. The innovative solutions originating from the R&D effort will be fully worked out and their effectiveness assessed and thoroughly demonstrated within the project lifetime. More specifically, the scientific and technical results expected by the conclusion of the project can be summarized as follows:

• New modeling and simulation capabilities to support accurate circuit thermal analysis and simulation.
• Innovative thermal-aware design techniques, methodologies and prototype tools for controlling, compensating and managing thermally-induced effects on parameters such as timing, (dynamic and leakage) power, reliability and yield.
• Demonstration of the accuracy and ease of integration within existing design flows of the new models by validation against measured data obtained on ad-hoc silicon structures.
• Demonstration of the applicability and effectiveness of the new design solutions through manufacturing of test-chips featuring leading-edge silicon technology, as available from some of the project partners.
• Demonstration of the usability and effectiveness of the new design methodologies and tools by their application to industry-strength design cases made available by some of the project partners.

Distinguishing feature of the R&D approach followed within THERMINATOR is that it unifies under a common design platform (i.e., the THERMINATOR Platform) the development of modeling, simulation, design and EDA techniques for devices and systems of different nature and purpose (digital blocks, analog/RF blocks, discrete components); this enables a synergic approach to thermal-aware design, thus offering a comprehensive set of solutions that covers the many different facets of the complex problem of accounting for temperature effects during the design of heterogeneous circuits and systems, such as those that will be hosted by the electronic products of the next generations.

The THERMINATOR Platform will be co-developed by research and industry partners, including several EDA vendors; this will ensure their usability in realistic, industry-strength design flows and environments, thus allowing the industrial partners to take advantage of the new solutions during the course of the project and to apply the new tools for production purposes shortly after project end.

The technical objectives highlighted above constitute a prerequisite for the commercial targets of the industrial partners, which are geared towards an improvement of their (and their customers) competitiveness in the world-wide market of electronic products and applications. Such objectives naturally extend to European semiconductor, telecom, consumer electronics and automotive industry as a whole, which could greatly benefit from the R&D results the THERMINATOR project will achieve and make available to the scientific and industrial communities during and after project lifetime. In fact, one additional objective of the THERMINATOR project is that of disseminating Europe-wide the valuable know-how and competence that each single partner will acquire thanks to the R&D effort performed by all the researchers, designers, application and EDA engineers participating to the project.