Optimal VLSI Delay Tuning by Wire Shielding

Binyamin Frankel, Shmuel Wimer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Interconnect shielding is used in VLSI designs to avoid noise interference from the cross-coupling capacitance between adjacent signals. This paper takes advantage of the shields already present in the design and uses them to tune the propagation delay of the clock signals, thus eliminating expensive dedicated delay buffers. The problem of obtaining the desired delay at a minimum shielding cost (silicon area) is formulated as a calculus of variations problem. An analytical solution shows that a square root shield profile is optimal.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1060-1067
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Optimization Theory and Applications
Volume170
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Sep 2016

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Funding

The authors are thankful for the useful comments and corrections made by the editor Prof. D. Hull. This research was supported by the Office of the Israeli Chief Scientist under the HiPer consortium of the MAGNET program.

FundersFunder number
Office of the Israeli Chief Scientist

    Keywords

    • Calculus of variations
    • Delay tuning
    • Wire shielding

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