Analysis and simulations of interconnects in high-speed integrated circuits

The authors deal with transmission line analysis of high speed interconnects connected in a general graph topology. The method proposed allows monitoring voltage/current at discrete time intervals at user-designated points on an interconnect system of any topology. The discrete-time signals on transmission lines are related by simultaneous equations in time and space (points on a net). However, delay property of the transmission lines can be used to obtain the signal value at a node at a given time from the signal values at adjacent nodes at some previous times. Computing time is linear with respect to the number of nodes and also linear with respect to the number of time points for which simulation is desired. Accuracy and storage requirements of the proposed method, in general, depends on the time step to be used. Included are preliminary results on stability analysis which may lead to design rules for reliable design of interconnect structures