Designing Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Protection for Monolithic SoCs and Multi-Die Systems

By _Synopsys Blog

June 22, 2023

Did you know that over 30% of semiconductor failures are attributed to electrostatic discharge (ESD)? Defined by the ESD Association as “the rapid, spontaneous transfer of electrostatic charge induced by a high electrostatic field,” ESD causes equipment malfunction by disrupting the normal operations of electronic systems. ESD-induced damage ranges from leakages and shorts to junction and metallization burnouts, gate oxide ruptures, and resistor-metal interface deterioration. Real-world examples of ESD-induced chip failures could include a smartphone that delivers electric shocks, a fitness tracker with a blinking screen, or a malfunctioning automatic emergency braking system.

To minimize ESD vulnerabilities, semiconductor companies integrate protective devices or circuits into their silicon. Essentially, these components prevent internal circuitry—and the protective elements themselves—from incurring damage during an ESD event by creating low-resistivity discharge current paths. Although protective elements are effective when properly implemented, designing ESD-resistant silicon on the latest process nodes is increasingly challenging. Indeed, engineers pack billions of circuits into dense monolithic systems-on-chip (SoCs), leaving only limited area for protective ESD elements that must be meticulously placed and verified. Moreover, multi-die systems introduce a slew of new ESD vulnerabilities via complex thermal and electrical interactions between processors, memories, and interconnects.

Read on to learn how evolving ESD challenges are spurring semiconductor companies to augment conventional static checkers with a new generation of full-chip design tools that rapidly analyze silicon and simulate millions of transient ESD surges.

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