Vinayakam Subramanian (Apache Design, Inc.) and Jairam Sukumar (Texas Instruments)
4/27/2012 10:10 AM EDT
Designing reliable three-dimensional (3D) system-on-chips (SoCs) is extremely complex, and critical for the next level of integration in silicon design. In 3D integrated circuit (3D-IC) vertical stacked-die architecture, individual die are connected directly by Through-Silicon-Vias (TSVs) and micro-bumps. Simulation of 3D-ICs for power integrity needs to model the 3D structure, including all the ICs and their TSV interconnects. Some challenges include modeling and integrating third-party application SoCs or memories into the current design framework and performing a complete analysis. This article outlines an approach for concurrent analysis of the 3D-IC power grid, as well as a chip model-based analysis, and how analysis based on a chip macro-model can yield the same results as concurrent full-chip analysis, resulting in significant runtime benefits.
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