The contents of this book are an expanded treatment of a set of presentations given at the first IEEE Workshop on Signal Propagation on Interconnects held Trnvemiindc, Germany, May 14- 16, 1997. Traditional VLSI-based cost and complexity measures have principally incolved transistor counts and chip area. Yet with the increase in clock frequency transistor has become an issue of major concern" At present the emergence of systems on silicon feces designers with a new challenge: how to guarantee signal integrity while propagating high signals between embedded cores on a Thus, interconnects are becuming a significant limiter of future system performance. The element~ involved arc mainly transmission lines but also other interconnect devices life vias, and packages" The electrical phenomena that have to investigated, as for example delay and crosstalk, are governed by electromagnetic theory. Consequently, even in digital circuits there large sectians in whieh the can longer considered logical ones and zeros but must be treated as analog waveforms. To complicate matters, the descriptian of subcircuits by ordinary differential eyuations is inadequate in many instsnces.
Only the use yartial differential aquations should guarantee sufficiently accurate results. Yet this would unfortunately increase the camplexity af simulatian and besign tremendously" Therefore, new approuuhes need to be developed.