Hello Dear Readers, Today in this post, I will provide some deep insight into the Signal Electromigration (Signal EM): Violations, Examples, and Practical Fixes. 1. Introduction: As technology nodes shrink into the deep‑submicron and nanometer regime (7nm, 5nm, 3nm and beyond), electromigration (EM) has become a first‑order reliability concern—not only for power/ground (PG) networks but also for signal nets. Signal EM failures are often underestimated because signal currents are transient and bidirectional. However, with higher switching activity, tighter metal pitches, thinner wires, and aggressive timing closure, signal EM can cause latent or early‑life failures if not addressed properly. This article explains: What Signal EM is and how it differs from PG EM Typical Signal EM violation scenarios Detailed, practical examples Root causes behind each violation Proven solutions and best practices to fix and prevent Signal EM issues 2. What is Signal Electromigration: El...
Hello Dear Readers, Today in this second post we will discuss further standard cells. A standard cell consists of a set of transistors and their connections which implements a boolean logic or a storage function. Although it is possible to generate any boolean function using only a NAND (or a NOR) gate, the designs will be more area effective by including other logical gates in the library. The elementary gates such as Buffer, Inverter, NAND, NOR, XOR, and memory cells are often found in any standard library while the rich and fancy libraries contain additional gates with higher complexity such as adders and multipliers. The initial design of a standard cell begins with implementing the functionality of the Cell at the transistor level. The schematic view of a cell is used for this purpose. In addition, schematic views are widely used for simulating and debugging circuits. The schematic of a cell can be represented by symbol view which consists of the input and output port...