Predicting the worst-case voltage violation in a 3D power network

This paper proposes an efficient method to predict the worst case of voltage violation by multi-domain clock gating in a three-dimensional (3D) on-chip power network considering leakage current. We first describe the 3D Power Distribution Network (PDN) structure which includes on-chip inductance and through-silicon-vias (TSV). The analysis flow using a superposition technique will be introduced later on. Then, we propose a general model to identify the worst-case gating pattern and the maximum variation area with arbitrary leakage current. For low power wireless chips, we introduce another simplified model, which treats the leakage to be a DC current. We formulate these two models with integer linear programming (ILP). The ILP based method is significantly faster than a conventional method based on enumeration. The experimental results also show that the noise contributed by leakage current is not negligible. Categories and Subject Descriptors J.6 [COMPUTER-AIDED ENGINEERING]: Compute...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: SLIP
• Authors: Wanping Zhang, Wenjian Yu, Xiang Hu, Amirali Shayan Arani, A. Ege Engin, Chung-Kuan Cheng
• Keywords: Clock Gating, Computer Networks, Integer Linear Programming, Leakage Current, SLIP 2009