Modelling and evaluation of substrate noise induced by interconnects

Interconnects have received attention as a source of crosstalk to other interconnects, but have been ignored as a source of substrate noise. The importance of interconnect-induced substrate noise is evaluated in this paper. A known interconnect and substrate model is validated by comparing simulation results to experimental measurements. Based on the validated modelling approach, a complete study considering frequency, geometrical, load and shielding effects is presented. The importance of interconnect-induced substrate noise is demonstrated after observing that, for typically sized interconnects and state-of-the-art speeds, the amount of coupled noise is already comparable to that injected by hundreds of transistors. The need to include high-frequency effects in the model is also discussed, together with accuracy trade-offs