May 17. 2004 – Sigrity, Inc. has introduced XcitePI, a tool that performs dynamic simulation of the full-chip power grid structure with package effects to determine the severity of power integrity issues.

“Many companies face daunting signal integrity and power integrity design challenges as they try to figure out what the noise effects are and where they are located, and then devise strategies to eliminate them,” said Jiayuan Fang, president of Sigrity. “Success requires the ability to adequately analyze the entire power delivery system – from chip to package to board – to ensure the integrity of power delivery systems and prevent costly respins. That’s a capability Sigrity brings to the market, due to our established work in power integrity solutions for boards and packages. Now we are extending it to ICs.”

Unlike existing power analysis tools that consider only the resistive, capacitive and limited inductive coupling effects of the power grid with lumped RLC off-chip models, Sigrity’s XcitePI tool analyzes the power grid with distributed electromagnetic field propagation effects of the package, and capacitive and inductive coupling between all conductors of the IC power grid. Once noise is generated at certain locations of a chip, it often propagates more easily to other locations of the chip through the package power and ground structures rather than directly through the power grid itself. Lumped RLC off-chip models cannot adequately model such effects; leaving corresponding software tools unable to determine the true transient noise distribution and behavior in the power delivery system. In contrast, XcitePI performs transient analysis of the IC power grid simultaneously with dynamic simulation of electromagnetic fields in the package planes, taking into account both the wave propagation effects in the package and distributed interaction of the IC power grid and package planes.

XcitePI uses a fast simulation engine, especially designed for power grids, to accomplish transient simulation of the full-chip power grid with package planes. It enables chip and package design engineers to find noise voltage fluctuations; assess the effects of decoupling capacitors, power grid physical parameters and package power and ground planes; and conduct “what if” analysis to optimize their designs. The initial release of XcitePI addresses design and analysis of IC power delivery systems.

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