Global Harmony: coupled noise analysis for full-chip RC interconnect networks

Abstract

Noise is becoming one of the most important metrics in the design of VLSI systems, certainly of comparable importance to area, timing, and power. In this paper, we describe Global Harmony, a methodology for the analysis of coupling noise in the global interconnect of large VLSI chips being developed for the design of high-performance microprocessors. The architecture of Global Harmony involves a careful combination of static noise analysis, static timing analysis, and reduced-order modelling techniques. We describe a reduced-order modelling approach that allows for passive multiport reduction of RC netlists as impedance macromodels while preserving the symmetry and sparsity of the state matrices for efficient storage. We describe how the macromodels are practically employed to perform coupling analysis and how timing constraints can be used to limit pessimism in the analysis.