PDN Challenges In DRAM-Based Compute-In-Memory Systems (UT Austin)


A new technical paper, "A comparative study on power delivery aspects of compute-in/near-memory approaches using DRAM," was published by researchers at UT Austin. Abstract "Compute-in-memory (PIM) mitigates the memory wall by performing computation within memory, reducing data movement and improving energy efficiency. DRAM-based PIM is particularly attractive due to its high density, matu... » read more

Robust Dynamic Voltage Droop Mitigation And Power Management


Power management is one of the keys for developing successful semiconductors products. There are virtually no applications for which power consumption is not a concern. Many creative solutions have been developed to reduce and manage power. Making these schemes work robustly in real-world conditions can be a challenge. This post considers widely used methods—voltage droop/glitch detection and... » read more

Minimizing Voltage Loss And Improving Yield In Advanced GAA Chips


The problem: As metal pitch scaling shrinks to support the next generation of logic devices, the IR (or voltage) drop from conventional frontside connections has become a major challenge [1,2]. As electricity travels through a chip’s metal wiring, some voltage gets lost because wires have resistance. If the voltage drops too much, the chip’s transistors can’t get enough power and ... » read more

Noise: A Chip Killer


Noise has always been important to communications experts, but it's quickly becoming an issue that every semiconductor designer has to contend with. Some chips already have been compromised. Noise can be defined as any deviation from the ideal that can impact intended functionality. When it comes to semiconductors, that could mean the ability to reliably extract a signal value at the intende... » read more

Power Integrity And Voltage Issues Get Harder To Detect And Solve


Voltage and power integrity are becoming increasingly critical and challenging for chip designers and architects, regardless of which process technology they are using or which market they are targeting. An explosion of features vying unevenly for current is increasing the number of constraints and possible interactions that engineers need to sort through to ensure reliability. These include... » read more

Current Problems Grow For Power Delivery


IR drop is becoming more problematic for a growing proportion of designs, an indication that the power delivery network (PDN) is not providing enough current to parts of the design when required. Unfortunately, there is no easy fix to this problem. In the past, when voltages were much higher, a small voltage droop didn't really matter. At the same time, wires were much thicker and presented ... » read more

Same Chip, Two Destinies: How Power Profiles Improve With On-Chip Monitoring


What happens to critical power-related considerations when the same chip is handled two different ways, with or without visibility from within? This article begins by examining how the absence of on-chip monitoring impacts peak power, average power, and Di/Dt noise (rate of current change), as illustrated in the diagram below and the subsequent discussion. It then details how these aspects c... » read more

Backside Power Delivery Nears Production


Backside power delivery is being called a game changer — a breakthrough technology and the next great enabler in CMOS scaling. It promises significant PPA advances, including faster switching, lower voltage droop, and reduced power supply noise. And it is poised to deliver these benefits below the 2nm node, despite a substantial disruption in front-end processes from lithography pattern di... » read more

Introduction To Voltage Droop And Mitigation


Voltage droop continues to plague high-performance SoCs, and not all mitigation systems are designed equal. When you have a choice, its always better to measure and quantify the differences. This paper provides a system-level introduction to voltage droop, along with a framework for measuring potential Vmin savings, and a way to answer the age-old question, "Is my mitigation system fast enough?... » read more

New Approaches To Power Decoupling


Decoupling capacitors have long been an important aspect of maintaining a clean power source for integrated circuits, but with noise caused by rising clock frequencies, multiple power domains, and various types of advanced packaging, new approaches are needed. Power is a much more important factor than it used to be, especially in the era of AI. “Doing an AI search consumes 10X the power t... » read more

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