A boundary-element approach to transient simulation of three-dimensional integrated circuit interconnect

Abstract

The authors demonstrate that boundary-element techniques can be used to perform very efficient transient simulation of three-dimensional interconnect structures, fast enough to easily be included in a circuit simulator. Two boundary element approaches are investigated, and it is shown that the most straight-forward approach leads to unacceptable discretization errors and a less intuitive second approach yields good results even with coarse surface meshes. Results of numerical experiments demonstrating the effectiveness of the second approach in calculating cross-talk are presented.<>