Voltage-Drop Optimization Through Insertion of Extra Stripes to a Power Delivery Network

Abstract

As the complexity increases, power delivery network (PDN) optimization becomes a more important step in a modern design. In order to construct a robust PDN, most classic PDN optimization methods focus on adjusting the dimensions of power stripes. However, this approach becomes infeasible when voltage violation regions also have severe routing congestion. Hence, this paper proposes a delicate procedure to insert additional power stripes to reduce voltage violation while maintaining routability. In the beginning, IR-drop high related regions are identified to reveal those locations which are thirsty for more currents. Then, we solve a minimum-cost flow problem to find the topologies of power delivery paths (PDPs) from power sources to these regions and determine the widths of edges in each PDP so that enough currents can be provided to these regions. Moreover, vertical power stripes (VPSs for short) are inserted to the locations which have less routing congestion and severe voltage violations by the dynamic programming to reduce a probability to deteriorate routability. Finally, more wires will be inserted to IR-drop high related regions if there still exist voltage violations. Experimental results show that our method can use much less routing resource and induce less routing congestion to meet IR-drop constraint in industry designs.