Power Integrity Analysis and Management for Integrated Circuits

Chapter 7. Effective Current Density and Continuum Models

The analysis of integrated circuits and systems gets ever more complex as they move into the nanoscale (1 nm to 100 nm) regimes. As lithographic capabilities advance, permitting minimum dimensions below 100 nm, silicon chips begin to integrate over a billion transistors and complex digital, analog, and memory functions. They also use a greater number number of interconnect metal layers for connectivity between integrated devices and functions. With this inevitable progression, traditional methods of representing individual wire segments by extracted electrical characteristics such as resistance, inductance, and capacitance lead to extremely large numbers of subcomponents and nodes. This ...