Analytical models for crosstalk excitation and propagation in VLSI circuits

The authors develop a general methodology to analyze crosstalk effects that are likely to cause errors in deep submicron high-speed circuits. They focus on crosstalk due to capacitive coupling between a pair of lines. Closed form equations are derived that quantify the severity of these effects and describe qualitatively the dependence of these effects on the values of circuit parameters, the rise/fall times of the input transitions, and the skew between the transitions. For noise propagation, they present a new way for predicting the output waveform produced by an inverter due to a nonsquare wave pulse at its input. To expedite the computation of the response of a logic gate to an input pulse, the authors have developed a novel way of modeling such gates by an equivalent inverter. The results of their analysis provide conditions that must be satisfied by a sequence of vectors used for validation of designs as well as post-manufacturing testing of devices in the presence of significant crosstalk. They present data to demonstrate accuracy of their results, including example runs of a test generator that uses these results.