Smart Early ASIC Design Prototyping And Analysis


The Power Delivery Network (PDN) is the backbone of ASIC design. It is used to supply clean power to active circuits in the IC. Voltage drop on the power rails can result in degraded performance, making delivery of noise free supply to all design elements including die, package and PCB, a challenging task. With increasing competition in the market, delivering chips on time with 'first silico... » read more

IP Design Essentials For Power Integrity


Smart connectivity is the new mantra of today – the ability to connect to anything, anywhere and at any time. With such technology enablement, low power is not a choice but an expectation. Whether it is a connected device, or a system that is part of the infrastructure, they are driven to integrate various functionality such as high speed computing, high-speed memory, memory interfaces, radio... » read more

Ubiquitous Trend In Design for Power (DFP) For IP And SoCs


Semiconductor design engineers must meet power specification thresholds, or power budgets, that are dictated by the electronic system vendors to whom they sell their products. Analyzing and reducing power across the board in all market segments has become a key requirement and a differentiator, especially over last 8 to 10 years for IP and IP-based SoC designers. Many products live and die due ... » read more

Can RTL Clock Power Be Accurate Enough For Sub-20nm Multi-GHz Designs?


The Register Transfer Language (RTL) has increasingly been adopted to enable early and high-impact power decisions. As a cycle-accurate hardware abstraction, RTL is expected to deliver reasonable power accuracy. Clocks are particularly important to analyze and optimize for power. They switch the most and drive the highest loads. Clock gating is an effective power reduction technique that shuts ... » read more

Changing The Meaning Of Sign-Off


Chip development teams are faced with an ever-increasing number of power integrity and reliability challenges these days, especially as designs adopt FinFET technology. Even those with the most thorough sign-off checks often encounter unexpected surprises that quickly turn into tape-out hurdles, or worse yet, extensive re-design. The best way to avoid this scenario and ensure a smoother sign-of... » read more

FinFET Based Designs: Reliability Verification Implications


Over the past few months, I’ve discussed various challenges associated with finFET-based designs. We all know that finFET devices enable design teams to operate their chips at significantly lower supply voltages with a very tight control on leakage current. But to control the overall power within a tight power budget, the challenge shifts to how the logic design is managed such that the overa... » read more

FinFET-Based Designs: Package Model Considerations


The use of FinFET devices in next-generation high-performance, low-power designs is a fundamental shift that is happening in the semiconductor industry. These devices through their smaller sizes, tighter Vth control and higher drive strengths enable higher performance and increased integration while reducing overall energy consumption. But along with their advantages these devices introduce and... » read more

FinFET-Based Designs: Power Sign-off Considerations


FinFET devices can operate at ultra-low sub-1V nominal supply voltage levels without impacting their delays. This allows for low power, higher performance designs needed for many of todays’ applications. These devices also have considerably higher drive strengths, allowing faster operating speeds. However, this can result in more localized di/dt current scenarios, and when coupled with more r... » read more

FinFET Based Designs: Power Analysis Considerations


Design teams working on mobile, computing, networking and other low power, high performance IPs and SoCs are migrating to FinFET-based technologies. However the benefits from their smaller sizes and the ability to deliver consistent performance at ultra-low sub-1V nominal supply voltage levels is outweighed by the worsening of power noise and reliability. As mentioned in an earlier blog on Powe... » read more

FinFET Reliability Issues


The 16nm FinFET node has introduced several new challenges in the IC design community. In addition to the complexity of power-noise and electromigration (EM) verification, thermal reliability has become a major concern for both chip and package designers. With the three-dimensional architecture of FinFET devices, new simulation approaches are being used to model thermal behavior of the die in o... » read more

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