Incremental Voltage Drop Simulation for IC Power Networks
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing dynamic voltage drop simulations in integrated circuits require full recalculation across the entire circuit even for minor design changes, leading to increased computational time and resource usage due to the random selection of signal vectors that may not accurately represent real-world scenarios, causing pessimistic results.
Innovation Solution
An incremental approach is adopted where simulations are performed only on selected portions of the design around 'victims' that capture sufficient 'aggressors' causing voltage drops, using user-defined constraints for accuracy and memory management, allowing for parallel processing across multiple cores and reducing data size.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If full dynamic voltage drop simulation is performed across the entire integrated circuit, then simulation accuracy is maintained, but computational time and resource usage increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the integrated circuit into multiple regions, with one region designated as the microcircuit of interest and other regions treated as boundary conditions. This segmentation allows simulation to focus only on the critical region while using simplified models for surrounding areas, thereby reducing computational time while maintaining accuracy for the region of interest.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the microcircuit of interest from the larger integrated circuit context and performs simulation on this isolated portion. By taking out only the necessary portion for detailed analysis and using boundary conditions to represent the rest of the circuit, the simulation achieves comparable accuracy to full-circuit simulation with significantly reduced computational resources.
2Productivity
If random vector selection is used for signal toggling in simulation, then the approach is fast and easy to implement, but the results become pessimistic and do not accurately represent real-world scenarios
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary analysis to identify critical signal paths and relevant toggling patterns before conducting the full simulation. By pre-determining which signals are most likely to cause voltage drops based on circuit topology and switching activity, the simulation can focus computational effort on realistic scenarios rather than using purely random selection, thus improving accuracy while maintaining efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, systems and media for simulating or analyzing voltage drops in a power distribution network can use an incremental approach to define a portion of a design around a victim to capture a sufficient collection of aggressors that cause appreciable voltage drop on the victim, and then an incremental simulation of just the portion can be performed rather than computing simulated voltage drops across the entire design. This approach can be both computationally efficient and can limit the size of the data used in simulating dynamic voltage drops in the power distribution network. Multiple different portions can be simulated separately in separate processing cores or elements. In one embodiment, a system can provide options of user selected constraints for the simulation to provide better accuracy or use less memory. Better accuracy will normally use a larger set of aggressors for each victim at the expense of using more memory.