Efficient gate delay modeling for large interconnect loads

With fast switching speeds and large interconnect trees (MCMs), the resistance and inductance of interconnect has a dominant impact on logic gate delay. In this paper, we propose a new /spl Pi/ model for distributed RC and RLC interconnects to estimate the driving point admittance at the output of a CMOS gate. Using this model we are able to compute the gate delay efficiently, within 25% of SPICE-computed delays. Our parameters depend only on total interconnect tree resistance and capacitance at the output of the gate, Previous "effective load capacitance" methods, applicable only for distributed RC interconnects, are based on /spl Pi/ model parameters obtained via a recursive admittance moment computation. Our model should be useful for iterative optimization of performance-driven routing or for estimation of gate delay and rise times in high-level synthesis.