Characterization of the worst-case current waveform excitations in general RLC-model power grid analysis

Validating the robustness of power distribution in modern IC design is a crucial but very difficult problem, due to the vast number of possible working modes and the high operating frequencies which necessitate the modeling of power grid as a general RLC network. In this paper we provide a character...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Evmorfopoulos, N, Rammou, M, Stamoulis, G, Moondanos, J
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Integrated circuit modeling
Manganese
Power grids
RLC circuits
Silicon
Symmetric matrices
Vectors
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Summary:Validating the robustness of power distribution in modern IC design is a crucial but very difficult problem, due to the vast number of possible working modes and the high operating frequencies which necessitate the modeling of power grid as a general RLC network. In this paper we provide a characterization of the worst-case current waveform excitations that produce the maximum voltage drop among all possible working modes of the IC. In addition, we give a practical methodology to estimate these worst-case excitations on the basis of a sample of the excitation space acquired via plain circuit simulation. In the course of characterizing the worst-case excitations we also establish that the voltage drop function for RLC grid models has nonnegative coefficients, which has been an open problem so far.
ISSN:1092-3152
1558-2434
DOI:10.1109/ICCAD.2010.5653921