Presentation
Tackling Local Noise Coverage Limitations in Transient EMIR Analysis for Robust SoC-Level PDN Closure
DescriptionThe methods traditionally used to analyse dynamic voltage drop on complex automotive SoCs are becoming increasingly inadequate in identifying important local simultaneous switching noise conditions that affect timing. Designers face significant challenges in EMIR signoff for such SoCs.
Coverage is severely limited for local switching noise, as most voltage drops arise from aggressors activity around a victim cell and significantly very less from cell's self-switching. Transient EMIR analysis is very sensitive to simulation timestep which should be small 5-10ps to ensure accuracy, limiting runtime for higher local noise coverage. For VCD-based flows, it is practically impossible to get proper vectors for 100% IR-drop coverage.
To overcome the above local noise coverage limitations in traditional EMIR, we present here a novel aggressor-coverage based sigma methodology that calculates realistic dynamic IR on all instances by taking a collection of all possible aggressors to each victim instance. It provides debug visibility to the designers to enable fixing violations early. Our methodology helps both in runtime reduction as well as uncovering IR hotspots missed in traditional approach to improve PDN robustness. Our results show high local noise coverage along with 2X runtime improvements that can be efficiently used to signoff EMIR with high confidence.
Coverage is severely limited for local switching noise, as most voltage drops arise from aggressors activity around a victim cell and significantly very less from cell's self-switching. Transient EMIR analysis is very sensitive to simulation timestep which should be small 5-10ps to ensure accuracy, limiting runtime for higher local noise coverage. For VCD-based flows, it is practically impossible to get proper vectors for 100% IR-drop coverage.
To overcome the above local noise coverage limitations in traditional EMIR, we present here a novel aggressor-coverage based sigma methodology that calculates realistic dynamic IR on all instances by taking a collection of all possible aggressors to each victim instance. It provides debug visibility to the designers to enable fixing violations early. Our methodology helps both in runtime reduction as well as uncovering IR hotspots missed in traditional approach to improve PDN robustness. Our results show high local noise coverage along with 2X runtime improvements that can be efficiently used to signoff EMIR with high confidence.
Event Type
Engineering Poster
TimeWednesday, July 293:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
LocationDAC Pavilion, Exhibit Floor