Validation and test issues related to noise induced by parasitic inductances of VLSI interconnects

Shows the results of studies of noise induced by various combinations of parasitic capacitances and inductances. Interconnects are simulated with parameters obtained from a 0.18 μm process. The four kinds of noise addressed are (i) crosstalk pulse; (ii) crosstalk speedup and slowdown; (iii) oscillatory noise; (iv) combination of oscillatory noise and crosstalk pulse. The crosstalk effects induced by a combination of mutual capacitance and mutual inductance can be larger than those induced by mutual capacitance alone, even if capacitive crosstalk dominates. For certain interconnects that are capacitively and inductively coupled, transitions in the same direction on an aggressor and victim line can cause speedup or slowdown, depending on timing parameters. A similar observation holds for transitions in opposite directions. We also observe that oscillatory noise can combine with crosstalk pulse under certain skew conditions and give rise to a large magnitude of noise. We show that inductance induced noise can be a problem in medium length interconnects. Because such interconnects can occur in combinational logic blocks, the generation of suitable vectors for test and validation of such logic blocks is of concern.