Early analysis of cost/performance trade-offs in MCM systems

This paper explores early analysis of the complex relationships between system architectures and the active and packaging materials from which they are implemented. The goals of this analysis are to enable the designer to specify cost effective technologies for a particular system and to uncover resources which may be exploited to increase performance of such a system, early in the design process. We describe a prototype tool called IMPACT, which will predict cost, performance, power, and reliability, and present several case studies demonstrating its use.