Rapid Modeling and Simulation Methods for Large-Scale and Circuit-Intuitive Electromagnetic Analysis of Integrated Circuits and Systems

Li Xue, Purdue University

Abstract

Accurate, fast, large-scale, and circuit-intuitive electromagnetic analysis is of critical importance to the design of integrated circuits (IC) and systems. Existing methods for the analysis of integrated circuits and systems have not satisfactorily achieved these performance goals. In this work, rapid modeling and simulation methods are developed for large-scale and circuit-intuitive electromagnetic analysis of integrated circuits and systems. The derived model is correct from zero to high frequencies where Maxwell’s equations are valid. In addition, in the proposed model, we are able to analytically decompose the layout response into static and full-wave components with neither numerical computation nor approximation. This decomposed yet rigorous model greatly helps circuit diagnoses since now designers are able to analyze each component one by one, and identify which component is the root cause for the design failure. Such a decomposition also facilitates efficient layout modeling and simulation, since if an IC is dominated by RC effects, then we do not have to compute the full-wave component; and vice versa. Meanwhile, it makes parallelization straightforward. In addition, we develop fast algorithms to obtain each component of the inverse rapidly. These algorithms are also applicable for solving general partial differential equations for fast electromagnetic analysis. The fast algorithms developed in this work are as follows. First, an analytical method is developed for finding the nullspace of the curl-curl operator in an arbitrary mesh for an arbitrary order of curl-conforming vector basis function. This method has been applied successfully to both a finite-difference and a finite-element based analysis of general 3-D structures. It can be used to obtain the static component of the inverse efficiently. An analytical method for finding the complementary space of the nullspace is also developed. Second, using the analytically found nullspace and its complementary space, a rigorous method is developed to overcome the lowfrequency breakdown problem in the full-wave analysis of general lossy problems, where both dielectrics and conductors can be lossy and arbitrarily inhomogeneous. The method is equally valid at high frequencies without any need for changing the formulation. Third, with the static component part solved, the full-wave component is also ready to obtain. There are two ways. In the first way, the full-wave component is efficiently represented by a small number of high-frequency modes, and a fast method is created to find these modes. These modes constitute a significantly reduced order model of the complementary space of the nullspace. The second way is to utilize the relationship between the curl-curl matrix and the Laplacian matrix. An analytical method to decompose the curl-curl operator to a gradient-divergence operator and a Laplacian operator is developed. The derived Laplacian matrix is nothing but the curl-curl matrix’s Laplacian counterpart. They share the same set of non-zero eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Therefore, this Laplacian matrix can be used to replace the original curl-curl matrix when operating on the full-wave component without any computational cost, and an iterative solution can converge this modified problem much faster irrespective of the matrix size. The proposed work has been applied to large-scale layout extraction and analysis. Its performance in accuracy, efficiency, and capacity has been demonstrated.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Jiao, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Design|Physics|Electrical engineering|Electromagnetics

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