Distributed On-Chip Power Delivery

The performance of an integrated circuit depends strongly upon the power delivery system. With the introduction of ultra-small on-chip voltage regulators, novel design methodologies are needed to simultaneously determine the location of the on-chip power supplies and decoupling capacitors. In this paper, a unified design methodology is proposed to determine the optimal location of the power supplies and decoupling capacitors in high performance integrated circuits. Optimization algorithms widely used for facility location problems are applied in the proposed methodology. The effect of the number and location of the power supplies and decoupling capacitors on the power noise and response time is discussed.