By Dr. Larry Williams, Distinguished Engineer at ANSYS Inc.
Dr. Larry Williams
Technological Innovations
There are a number of technological innovations that I predict will turn heads in 2024.
First, continued 3D-IC and heterogeneous integration. The slowing of Dennard Scaling and Moore’s Law can be mitigated in part by 3D-IC integration, but 3D-IC has several multiphysics challenges like thermal integrity, mechanical stress, and warpage. This is due to differential thermal expansion, electromagnetic modeling for signal integrity, and full-system power integrity. These trends drive the industry to add simulation of novel physical effects as part of integrated EDA workflows. Ansys RedHawk-SC Electrothermal offers a gold-standard technology platform to examine and simulate the multiphysics behavior of 2.5D and 3D-IC designs. Designers use it to model and analyze the full-system multiphysics of entire 3D-IC designs, including chip, interposer, package, and system boundary conditions. RedHawk-SC Electrothermal relies on core solver technology from trusted golden signoff tools including RedHawk-SC™, HFSS™, Icepak™, Ansys Mechanical™, and more, to provide a comprehensive workflow for the multiphysics challenges.
From these innovations, it’s clear that 3D-IC technology is driving an inflection point in semiconductor design, which has spurred Ansys and the entire EDA industry to retool with an expanded set of multiphysics capabilities that will still be undergoing rapid advances in 2024.
