Current reliability issues and future technologies for systems on silicon – processes, circuits, chip architecture, and design

The progress of silicon technology is opening the era of “systems on silicon” in which a large-scale memory, a CPU, and other logic macros will be integrated on a single chip. These kinds of chips, called system LSIs, have an especially promising future in mobile and multimedia applications but face inherent technical problems related to the reliability of ultrathin oxide film, conflict in the processing of different components, increased gate and subthreshold leakage currents, memory bottlenecks, and design complexity. This paper reviews the system LSIs and then introduces related technologies in processing, circuits, chip architecture, and design. It also discusses the influence of the system LSIs on business strategies.