A unified approach to simulating electrical and thermal substrate coupling interactions in ICs

The incomplete Choleski conjugate gradient (ICCG) method and a macromodeling technique employing asymptotic waveform evaluation (AWE) have been applied to the simulation of integrated circuits in the presence of parasitic electrical and thermal substrate coupling interactions. Simulation of electrical substrate coupling effects has been found to be accurate and fast as compared to MEDICI, a device simulation program. Simulation results are also in good agreement with reported measurements on a test chip fabricated in a 2/spl mu/m BiCMOS n-well process. DC/steady-state and transient simulations of thermal substrate interactions using similar techniques on several benchmark circuits show orders of magnitude reduction in cpu time compared to traditional simulation techniques.