Scalable power grid transient analysis via MOR-assisted time-domain simulations

Abstract

Time domain power grid simulations provide accurate estimations of power supply noises for design verifications. Despite extensive researches, it remains a very challenging problem to perform the simulations efficiently -- the large power grid sizes demand tremendous computational resources and the causality between consecutive time steps hinders parallel implementations. Frequency domain and model order reduction (MOR) techniques promise scalability, though the solution accuracy may become a concern without trading off running time. In this paper, we present a framework for power grid transient analysis where time domain simulations are assisted by MOR techniques for scalability without losing much of the solution accuracy. Utilizing a direct sparse matrix solver and the multinode moment matching technique, we are able to achieve more than 5X speed-up using 16 processor cores distributed over two servers when simulating 1000 time steps for all the six IBM power grid simulation benchmarks, in comparison to the time domain simulations using only the direct solver.