An integrated methodology for electronic system interconnect analysis

Finer feature sizes, increasing system complexity and higher signal speeds have combined to make interconnect the dominant determinant of digital electronic system performance. An efficient methodology to analyze general interconnect problems is presented in this thesis. The Asymptotic Wave-form Evaluation (AWE) technique forms the core of this methodology. AWE is a general, efficient and accurate technique to determine transient responses of large linear circuits in terms of a few dominant poles and residues. A technique to form AWE macromodels for linear circuit partitions has been developed. These macromodels can be used as instead of the original circuit, resulting in significant improvements in the CPU and memory requirements for nonlinear transient analysis of interconnect problems.; Two methods to find AWE macromodels for distributed circuit elements without using lumped equivalents have also been developed. The first technique creates admittance macromodels which can be combined with other circuit partitions in the frequency domain. The second technique combines AWE with the method of characteristics to produce characteristic macromodels which can be used in time domain simulations. These macromodels are very accurate when the distributed element modeled has a significant ideal delay.; A strategy to efficiently include AWE macromodels in a nonlinear transient simulation has been described. A prototype nonlinear simulation interface, AWESpice, combining the efficiency of AWE for large linear circuits and generality of SPICE for nonlinear circuits has been developed.; These enhancements make it possible to analyze large practical electronic system interconnect problems accurately and efficiently.