Dependability analysis of nano-scale FinFET circuits

Abstract

FinFET technology has been proposed as a promising alternative for deep sub-micro bulk CMOS technology, because of its better scalability. Previous work have studied the performance or power advantages of FinFET circuits over bulk CMOS circuits. This paper provides the dependability analysis of FinFET circuits, studying the soft error vulnerability of FinFET circuits and the impact of process variation. Our experiments compare FinFET circuits against bulk CMOS circuits in both 32nm and 45nm technologies, showing that FinFET circuits have better dependability and scalability, which is indicated by better soft error immunity and less impact of process variation. It is concluded that FinFET-based circuit design is more robust than the bulk CMOS based circuit design. © 2006 IEEE.