Microcontroller power integrity black-box model

Abstract

Electronics is now essential to many power controlling features. Among all of the electronic modules, the central part is the microcontroller (μC). The power integrity (PI) of such modules, by all means, is one of the most critical issues for μC. Due to the fast advances of μC design and VLSI processing technologies, Platform-Based Design Methodology (PBDM) is now the major design trend for such modules. Due to intellectual property considerations, IC design companies seldom expose internal architecture details of their IC products to PI modelers. Since the internal module behaviors are unknown, it makes PI modeling very difficult. The proposed block-box PI modeling method for μC is based on the measurement of a preprepared testing board(s) to build a PI model. The concept is based on block-box discrete impulse response (BBIR) function calculation. BBIR is based on solely measurement basis and treat the target as a block-box. Through block-box type deductions and measurements, BBIR model can be built. After the model building process, the PI behavior of a new testing board (or module) with the same μC are estimated according to BBIR model. A case study is given for the effectiveness of the proposed method. In this case study, the PI model is firstly built and, then, followed by a real measurement of the PI behaviors of the new testing board. The proposed model is verified by the comparison of the estimated data and the physical measurements. From the experiment results, it shows that the proposed power model does in good accordance with the PI behavior of the target μC both in time-domain and frequency-domain.