Electromigration aware circuits by using special signal non-default routing rules

Electromigration (EM) effects are a high concern in power delivery networks where the current flow is unidirectional. As the integrated circuits (IC) technology nodes become smaller, the EM effects become a critical reliability failure mechanism also on signal nets. Such effect is also known as AC electromigration. This work presents a design strategy using special signal non-default routing rules (SSNDRs) to re-route the wire segments of critical nets that present a high current density and are EM-unsafe. Some EM-aware design steps are added in the traditional design flow to analyze, fix and improve the Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) of the designs.