A physical-based noise macromodel for fast simulation of switching noise generation

Efficient prediction of the substrate noise generated by large digital sections is currently a major challenge in System-on-a-Chip design. A macromodel to accurately and efficiently predict the substrate noise generated by digital standard cells is presented. The macromodel is generated from identification of the physical elements relevant to noise generation. Techniques to directly or indirectly compute the values of the elements in the cell macromodel are proposed. Using this macromodel, prediction of the noise generated by large digital sections can be easily done following a methodology based on high-level logic simulation. As a first step to validation, the macromodel accuracy is demonstrated in some circuits consisting of a reduced number of gates.