Comprehensive broadband electromagnetic modeling of on-chip interconnects with a surface discretization-based generalized PEEC model

Abstract

This paper proposes a comprehensive integral equation electromagnetic field solver for broadband modeling of on-chip interconnects. Instead of the computationally intensive volumetric discretization model, which appears to be currently the most popular method of choice for handling the tall and narrow cross sections of the on-chip wiring and capturing correctly the impact of adjacent wiring coupling and skin effect, the proposed generalized partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) methodology utilizes a computationally more efficient conductor surface discretization. Key to the success of such a surface discretization model is the definition of a position- and frequency-dependent surface impedance used to relate the tangential electric field and current on the wire surface. A novel strategy for the identification of loops in the resulting discrete model leads to a numerically-stable and efficient mesh analysis-based PEEC formulation in support of on-chip interconnect electromagnetic modeling from DC to multi-GHz frequencies.