Multi-pad power/ground network design for uniform distribution of ground bounce

Abstract

This paper presents a method for power and ground (p/g) network routing for high speed CMOS chips with multiple p/g pads. Our objective is not to reduce the total amount of the ground bounce, but to distribute it more evenly among the pads while the routing area is kept to a minimum. We first show that proper p/g terminal to pad assignment is necessary to reduce the maximum ground bounce and then present a heuristic for performing simultaneous assignment and p/g net routing. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.