Measurement-Based Analysis of Delay Variation Induced by Dynamic Power Supply Noise

Abstract

Accurate on-chip 100-ps/100-μV waveform measurements of signal transition in a large-scale digital integrated circuit clearly demonstrates the correlation of dynamic delay variation with power supply noise waveforms. In addition to the linear dependence of delay increase with the height of static IR drop, the distortion of a signal waveform during a logic transition that is induced by dynamic power supply noise causes significant delay variation. However, an analysis reveals that average modeling of dynamic power supply noise, which is often used in conventional simulation techniques, cannot match the experimentally measured values. Our proposed circuit simulation technique, which incorporates time-domain power supply noise waveform macro models along with parasitic impedance networks, reproduces the delay variation well, even with a relative timing difference among different clock domains. Such basic knowledge can be applied in precise delay calculations that consider dynamic power supply noise, a crucial factor in deep sub-100-nm LSI design.