A TRANSMISSION-LINE SIMULATOR FOR HIGH-SPEED INTERCONNECTS

Transmission line effects in high-speed interconnects may cause reliability problems in digital integrated circuits. This paper shows how signals at user designated points on a multipoint interconnect can be obtained at discrete instances of time. The program "transmission-line simulator" (TLSIM) is based on a method of iteratively updating the signal values at a node (point) based on the previous signal values at neighboring nodes. The novel characteristics of the method avoid the time-consuming numerical solution of partial differential equations in time and distance along the length of an interconnect. The method is especially significant for power and clock nets where the number of interconnects can be quite large. Included are preliminary results on stability analysis and experimental results.