Three-dimensional switchbox multiplexing in emerging 3D-FPGAs to reduce chip footprint and improve TSV usage

Three-dimensional integration technology is proposed to break down long wires and increase integration level of emerging complex designs. However, efficiency of this technology heavily depends on the usage of Through-Silicon Vias. TSVs are key solutions for cooling the 3D-chips but they occupy considerable silicon area. Therefore, reducing the number of required TSVs in routing step is very critical in 3D-chips. In this paper, a TSV multiplexing approach is proposed to reduce the number of required routing TSV. We proposed two multiplexed 3D-switchbox architectures. In the first architecture, the TSVs inside the switchboxes are multiplexed while in the second architecture, TSVs are multiplexed between the switchboxes. Moreover, a routing algorithm is suggested to route the FPGA using the multiplexed switchboxes to evaluate the proposed architectures. Experimental results show that the presented architectures and algorithms reduce the number of used TSVs by 64.58% and 71.27% on average for the first and second architectures respectively, in cost of a negligible overheads in total wire length and auxiliary switches.