The roots of this book, and of the new research field that it defines, lie in the scaling of VLSI technology. With gigahertz system clocks and ever- accelerating design and process innovations, interconnects have become the limiting factor for both performance and density. This increasing impact of interconnects on the system implementation space necessitates new tools and analytic techniques to support the system designer. With respect to modeling and analysis, the response to interconnect dom- inance is evolutionary. Atomistic- and grain-level models of interconnect structure, and...

The roots of this book, and of the new research field that it defines, lie in the scaling of VLSI technology. With gigahertz system clocks and ever- accelerating design and process innovations, interconnects have become the limiting factor for both performance and density. This increasing impact of interconnects on the system implementation space necessitates new tools and analytic techniques to support the system designer. With respect to modeling and analysis, the response to interconnect dom- inance is evolutionary. Atomistic- and grain-level models of interconnect structure, and...