A Twisted-Bundle Layout Structure for Minimizing Inductive Coupling Noise.pdf

A Twisted-Bundle Layout Structure for Minimizing Inductive Coupling Noise  Guoan Zhong, Cheng-Kok Koh, and Kaushik Roy School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-1285fzhongg,chengkoh,kaushikg@ecn.purdue.edu ABSTRACT In this paper, we propose a novel twisted-bundle layout structure for minimizing inductive coupling noise. In this structure, we cre- ate several routing regions and re-order the routing of nets in each of these routing regions. The purpose is to create complementary and opposite current loops in the twisted-bundle layout structure, such that the magnetic fluxes arising from any signal net within a twisted group cancel each other in the current loop of a net of interest. The effectiveness of the twisted-bundle structure in mini- mizing coupling inductance has been verified by the application of FastHenry extraction on a 16-bit bus structure. We achieve about two orders of magnitude reduction in inductive coupling. SPICE simulations also show that the 16-bit twisted-bundle bus structure is able to maintain high signal integrity at high frequency of opera- tion. 1. INTRODUCTION Continued scaling of semiconductor technology has brought the issues of interconnect-limited designs to the forefront. The Inter- national Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor (ITRS) [1] fore- casts that as the VLSI technology advances towards giga-Hertz on- chip frequency and system-level integration on larger die size, self- and coupling-inductances are becoming dominant factors in deter- mining signal delay and signal integrity. Ref. [16] gave an extensive survey of various noise sources in circuit design. Predominantly, existing studies focused on cross- talk noise due to capacitive coupling. Due to the short range effect of capacitive coupling, techniques such as shielding, net ordering or track permutation have proved to be effective in minimizing ca- pacitive cross-talk noise [6; 17]. On the other hand, inductive effects have a