ARO ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT

1. ARO PROPOSAL #: 37390-EL, RPI proposal #: 159-97-101F, RPI internal Account # A10802.

2. PERIOD COVERED BY REPORT: August 1, 1997 - December 31, 1997.

3. TITLE OF PROPOSAL:

"MCM Packaging for F-RISC/G- Subnanosecond Fast RISC for TeraOPS Parallel Processing Applications"

4. CONTRACT OR GRANT NUMBER: ARO/DARPA DAAG55-97-1-0316

5. NAME OF INSTITUTION: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

6. AUTHOR OF REPORT: Professor J. F. McDonald

7. LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS SUBMITTED OR PUBLISHED UNDER ARO SPONSORSHIP

DURING THIS PERIOD, INCLUDING JOURNAL REFERENCES:

In Print:

``A 16 GHz Fast RISC Engine using GaAs and SiGe HBT Technology" S. Carlough, S. Steidl. Kraft, A. Garg, C. Maier, P. Campbell, H. J. Greub and J.F. McDonald, Proceedings of 1997 International Conference on Innovative Systems in Silicon, ISIS97, L. LaForge, H. Bolouri, D. Sciuto, and S. Tewksbury, October 8-10, 1997, pp 72-81.

"A Very Wide Bandwidth Digital VCO using Quadrature Frequency Multiplication/Division Implemented with GaAs/AlGaAs HBT's," P. Campbell, J. F. McDonald, H. Greub, S. Steidl, C. Maier, and A. Garg, I.E.E.E. Transactions on VLSI Systems, December 1997.

Graduate Students supported during life of contract:

Hans Greub (PhD awarded, Dec. 1990), Matthew Ernest, Atul Garg (PhD awarded, December 1997), Sam Steidl, Steve Carlough, Peter Campbell (AASERT PhD awarded, May 1997), Clifford Maier (AASERT PhD awarded, May 1996), Tom Kryczak

Faculty:

J. F. McDonald (Full Professor), H. Greub (Assistant Professor), R. Kraft (Adjunct Professor).

8. REPORT OF INVENTIONS (BY TITLE ONLY):

None to report in this period.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF RESEARCH FINDINGS

The goal of the F-RISC/G (Fast Reduced Instruction Set Computer - version G) project at Rensselaer is to develop a 32-bit GaAs/AlGaAs processor with a cycle time of 1.0 ns and a peak performance of 1000 MIPS, utilizing a 2 GHz four phase clock. A 5 chip set of GaAs integrated circuits has been developed for this task. This contract is for the design and fabrication of a GE/HDI MCM to permit integration of these integrated circuits. The project is unique in the sense that the chips have an extremely large number of GaAs/AlGaAs HBT's on each chip of the multichip partition of the architecture For the GaAs/AlGaAs F-RISC/G effort initial yield expectations for the Rockwell Newbury Park 50 GHz 1.4 micron baseline process were a mere 5K transistors at 20% yield. However, during the lifetime of the contract that expectation rose to 8K transistors at ~50% yield. The smallest of the FRISC chips has ~10K HBT's. Hence, this project will test yields of the Rockwell process on much larger chips than have been attempted before. The key to integrating these circuits will be the Multichip Module Package. This form of packaging permits integrating 25 GaAs/AlGaAs integrated circuits totaling more than a quarter of a million HBT's. The submission of the fabrication run for these integrated circuits has been delayed a great deal due to modeling errors in the SPICE model for the HBT presented by Rockwell for use in digital circuits. In addition, wire capacitances were ~30% larger due to undocumented anisotropy in the DuPont 2610/11 polyimides used as interlayer dielectrics in that process. However, after extremely difficult and lengthy rework to overcome these difficulties the integrated circuits are now, finally fully ready for fabrication. This fabrication requires fulfillment of a Rensselaer Purchase Order for $120K that was issued at the end of the first contract for FRISC/G sponsored by DARPA/ARO. The funds for this contract have been encumbered for an extremely long time awaiting completion of the redesign effort. Essentially the modeling errors proved very difficult to overcome in the redesign effort, and in fact, require two non standard design rule changes in the Rockwell standard 50 GHz process to overcome these deficiencies.

The work presented here may be considered preparatory for eventual microprocessor integration at much higher HBT yield levels. For example, IBM has developed a new silicon CMOS compatible SiGe base HBT comparable in speed to the Rockwell 50 GHz baseline process devices. SiGe HBT yields are much higher, at least at the 40,000 HBT level, and no device specific yields have been seen yet at IBM relative to a conventional Si bipolar process. Hence, yields for these devices may range from 100K to over 1M as this process matures. Work by one of the graduate students [C. Maier] at EXPONENTIAL Inc. of San Jose subsequent to his graduation in 1996, revealed that with a 25 GHz HITACHI 0.5 micron Si bipolar/CMOS process there was enough yield to fabricate a 533 MHz three way superscalar Power PC emulator for the new IBM 750 chip which uses the same CML circuitry for all its logic that is used in these GaAs integrated circuits. IBM's new 6 level 0.25 micron Cu interconnect process will host 100 GHz SiGe HBT's. Between the factor of 4 in improved device performance relative to the HITACHI EXP process and the enhanced low resistance Cu interconnect to be used in that process one can predict a factor of at least 16 improvement in clock rate relative to either the EXP chip or the FRISC architecture. The FRISC architecture does not follow the PowerPC architecture in the interest of achieving the highest clock rate possible. This should give superior worst case timing performance.

Specific accomplishments of the present packaging contract include the completion of the entire design for the GE/HDI MCM package. This work was conducted in conjunction with Glen Forman who is the GE/HDI program manager at the nearby GE Corporate Research and Development Center in Niskayuna, New York, a mere 30 miles from the campus. All of the artwork for the GE Cu/Polyimide chip to chip wiring tape has been completed and design rule checked in conjunction with GE. The Polyimide used in this process processed by extrusion and does not exhibit the anisotropy seen in the chip dielectrics. The fastest signals for the architecture (2GHz) are transmitted with predictable attenuation due to slight resistance in the lines up to the longest line in the system which is 5 cm. The subcontract for this work will be let at the point when we are certain the chip tape is accepted for fabrication at Rockwell for the chips. This is being done to assure cost estimation done at the start of the GE contract will not increase significantly as the chips are being fabricated. The MCM houses 25 GaAs chips of approximately 1cm die size.



The following figure is a screen capture of several of the layers of the GE/HDI MCM tape as produced by the Mentor Graphics Package.



Figure 1. Top view screen grab of Mentor Tools view of GE/HDI tape for 25 chip GaAs/AlGaAs

F-RISC/G MCM.

At the edge of the GE/HDI tape one can see the U shaped fixtures which provide access to SMA mini connectors shown in the following figure



Figure 2. Special Adapters for GE/HDI tape to SMA connector

These adapters provide for the primary test lines to test the FRISC at the 2 GHz clock rate. One is the clock and the other two are for a serial test input/output port that can verify CPU activity at speed. Additional connectors are provided for SI/SO serial test leads of the overall boundary scan system to check the GE/HDI chip to chip wiring and to verify that chips under the tape have survived to that point in the packaging process.

The GE/HDI process is compatible with the construction of an Al nitride ceramic base that can be interfaced to an IBM Enterprise microfin array heat sink as shown in the following figure. An exhaust plenum has been acquired to dissipate the heat from the system.




Figure 3. Donated IBM System 390 microfin array heat sink showing top platform for GE/HDI Al Nitride ceramic block holding the GaAs chips and wiring tape.

A printed circuit board has been devised to provide the serial driver/receiver interface to drive the SMA 2 GHz connectors for testing either the individual chips after fabrication via GGB or Cascade Microwave probe assemblies, for testing the chips manually after insertion into the partially assembled GE/HDI package at various stages, or for the finally assembled package.


Figure 4. Printed Circuit Board Layout for 2GHz pin driver electronics for HBT chip and MCM testing.


Figure 5. Partial Mentor Circuit Schematic for GaAs Pin Driver Electronic Tester (the EL1056C is the actual pin driver chip).




Figure 6. Actual Pin Driver Card before component population. The large PGA package is an FPGA to provide the shift in and shift out logic. Pin driver chips are to the rightmost side (there are four).


This pin driver card will provide the shift in and shift out clock signals needed by the GaAs HBT chips and the integrated MCM system to assure adequate signal edge acuity for proper behavior while interfacing to the IBM PC through an FPGA that provides the hardware needed to personalize the patterns for each chip. The parts under test also receive a direct 2GHz clock for at speed boundary scan test after the test patterns are shifted in.

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

In addition to the nominal package research activity undertaken on this contract, one significant development for the future has taken place. Partially by support by DARPA and partially by fellowship support at INTEL and IBM, one of the students in the group [Sam Steidl] undertook a project to redesign the core 5 GHz register file of the Fast RISC/G into the newer IBM 50 GHz SiGe HBT process at East Fishkill. This process involves cointegration of the HBT with CMOS 5S, which is an 0.5 micron process, although none of the design effort involved CMOS for this project. The old register file was only 8 bits wide, and was singly ported due to yield constraints in the GaAs process. The new register file is a fully integrated 32 bit register file with three independent ports, two for simultaneous reading and one for simultaneous writing. Test circuitry for running the register file at the anticipated 7-8 GHz rate was cointegrated and submitted to Joel Goldberg at MOSIS for inclusion into the first DARPA sponsored SiGe HBT shared reticle. The chip finally fit into a space 2mm by 2.5mm, which was comparable to the space for the first test chip built at Rockwell for the GaAs HBT register file. This results from the fact that the anticipated yield at the IBM foundry is more than 4 times larger than that at the GaAs foundry.

Figure 7. Fully integrated single chip 32 w x 32b SiGe HBT register file memory submitted under the first IBM/DARPA/MOSIS multiproject reticle run.

This work is cited as technology transfer because as one of the conditions for IBM making the SiGe HBT process available to RPI, IBM is free to examine or sample any of the circuits that are fabricated from RPI designs.


In addition to the register file a second small integrated circuit was provided to MOSIS for fabrication under the same run. This is a SiGe HBT version of the wideband VCO discussed in the summary of publicatioins above, for the GaAs/AlGaAs VCO presented there. This circuit is available for transfer to NSA, a collaborating contributor to the same shared reticle.


Figure 8. A SiGe HBT version of theGaAs/AlGaAs HBT VCO presented in the Nov./Dec. Issue of TVLSI.

The significance of this VCO is that it can be used to generate clock signals to 20 GHz for a great variety of projects. One of the functions to be driven by this oscillator is a set of "silicon slow wave" characterization test structures to examine attenuation of signals in various wiring environments in the presence of the lossy silicon substrate. Silicon slow wave attenuation represents a major gap in CAD support for design with SiGe HBT technology. Essentially attenuation can be quite drastic at 10 GHz clock rate unless there is mitigating screening by other nearby conductors. Unfortunately there is no CAD tool yet to help us predict the amount of attnuation that will remain, especially in light wiring congestion areas.

For example, consider a 8 GHz pulse propagating along a line over silicon with no nearby screening conductors. After propagating only 1cm the pulse will be nearly completely absorbed.

Figure 9. Sample of 8 GHz clock pulse absorption vs. line length for line over silicon with no nearby conductors to provide any screening.