ISCAS 2002

Abstract:

With the advance of semiconductor manufacturing, EDA, and VLSI design technologies, circuits with increasingly higher speed are being integrated at an increasingly higher density. This trend causes more signal integrity problems for both signal nets and power-ground networks.

We first discuss the signal integrity problem for signal nets. We present the interconnect extraction and noise modeling for both capacitive and inductive coupling, and describe noise minimization via layout optimization, including driver sizing and buffer insertion, wire sizing and spacing, shield insertion, and differential signaling.

We then discuss the power-ground integrity due to IR-drop, L di/dt noise, or LC resonance. We address its importance, verification methodology, and problem solution. Special focus will be given to inductance related L di/dt noise and LC resonance, which has been over-looked and will become significant in the near future.

About the Presenters:

Dr. Lei He obtained the Ph.D. degree in computer science from UCLA, and joined the faculty of ECE dept., University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1999. He has done extensive research on interconnect modeling and optimization. He was the primary developer of UCLA TRIO package, a tool set widely used for interconnect synthesis with routing construction, buffer insertion, device sizing, wire sizing, and wire spacing. He worked with Cadence in 1996 summer and verified the 2.5D capacitance extraction methodology shipped with SE 5.0 product. He worked with HP Laboratories in 1998 to 1999 and proposed the inductance extraction methodology used in state-of-the-art microprocessor designs. In 2000 summer, He was a consultant at Synopsys for design closure related to timing and signal integrity. He co-authored an embedded tutorial "Interconnect Design for Deep Submicron ICs", ICCAD97, and was the organizer and co-speaker for a half-day tutorial "Interconnect modeling and design for gigascale systems-on-chip with consideration of inductance" in the 2000 IEEE ASIC/SOC conference.

Dr. Shen Lin got his Ph.D from the EECS department of UC, Berkeley in 1992, and is the CTO and co-founder of Apache Design. He joined IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. from 1992-1995, and LSI Logic from 1995- 1997. From 1997-2000, he was with HP Labs working on design methodology, signal integrity, inductance, power/ground optimization, and clock skew minimization. He held one US patent on low power circuit design technique, filed four US patent applications, and published numerous technical papers. He is a co-author of the whole-day tutorial on signal integrity in DAC'2000, and is a co-speaker for an embedded tutorial in ICCAD'2001.