Ansys has collaborated with TSMC and Microsoft to validate a joint solution for analyzing mechanical stresses in multi-die 3D-IC systems manufactured with TSMC’s 3DFabric™ advanced packaging technologies.

Accordingly, this collaborative solution gives customers added confidence to address novel multiphysics requirements. Specifically, improving the functional reliability of advanced designs using TSMC’s 3DFabric. This advanced packaging technology by TSMC is a comprehensive family of 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies.

High-Speed, High-Capacity Cloud Solution

Ansys Mechanical is the industry-leading finite element analysis software used to simulate mechanical stresses caused by thermal gradients in 3D-ICs. Moreover, the solution flow has been proven to run efficiently on Microsoft Azure. Thus, helping to ensure fast turn-around times with today’s very large and complex 2.5D/3D-IC systems.

3D-IC systems often have large temperature gradients that lead to intense mechanical stresses between components due to differential thermal expansion. These stresses can lead to cracking or shearing of the connections between various elements. At the same time, they can reduce the reliable lifespan of a 3D-IC assembly.

As the size and complexity of semiconductor systems grow, it becomes more difficult to analyze them efficiently. Ansys Mechanical is running on Azure’s purpose-built HPC infrastructure. Moreover, the company is instrumental in scaling up computationally demanding stress simulations while maintaining predictive accuracy.

By automating highly complex thermo-mechanical stress simulations, Ansys Mechanical can simulate massive models due to a highly efficient hybrid parallel solver. Particularly, supporting cost-effective computing by using on-demand cloud computing resources like Azure.

Ensures High-Quality 3D IC Designs

James Chen, director of 3D IC integration division, TSMC said accurate analysis results has become critical for the 3D IC design. Particularly, in the face of design challenges brought by the growing size and complexity of semiconductor systems.

Furthermore, Chen stressed, “Our latest collaboration with Ansys and Microsoft will benefit designer with Ansys Mechanical on Microsoft Azure. (Thus), performing simulations faster without sacrificing accuracy to ensure high-quality 3D IC designs for the next generation AI, HPC, mobile and networking applications.”

Meanwhile, John Lee, vice president and general manager of the semiconductor, electronics, and optics business unit at Ansys, said, “With this valuable collaboration between Ansys, Microsoft, and TSMC, our innovative solutions address novel multiphysics challenges and accelerate time-to-market. While (at the same time) mitigating the risk of costly field failures in 3D-ICs due to thermo-mechanical stresses.”

In addition, Lee said, “Our joint customers and partners see increased value in Ansys’ open ecosystem approach, ensuring they can choose the best-in-class solutions and take advantage of our cloud-ready solvers with ease.”

“Microsoft and Ansys have collaborated to provide optimized cloud solutions for some of the biggest semiconductor design challenges with Microsoft Azure’s cloud resources and on-demand elastic compute capabilities,” said Merrie Williamson, corporate vice president, Azure infrastructure and digital & application innovation, Microsoft.