US 7,013,436 B1Granted

Analog circuit power distribution circuits and design methodologies for producing same

AssigneeBarcelona Design, Inc.

InventorsPaul B. Morton, Sunderarajan Mohan, Dan Bui

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Abstract

A power distribution circuit built with wiring layers that reside above an analog circuit is described. The power distribution circuit comprises one or more capacitive structures that reside above the analog circuit. At least one of the one or more capacitive structures has electrodes that provide supply and/or reference voltages and their corresponding currents to said analog circuit. A machine readable medium is described to perform a method in order to design the power distribution circuit. The method includes: assigning a specific supply or reference voltage to each of the electrodes; and, determining wiring dimensions for each of the electrodes. The wiring dimensions for the electrodes of at least one of the capacitive structures is are based at least in part on IR drop concerns.

Claims6

Dependent claims

A power distribution circuit above an analog circuit, said power distribution circuit built with interconnect wiring of a semiconductor chip integrated circuit that contains said analog circuit, said power distribution circuit comprising a mesh structure that includes:

a) a first group of metallic wires formed in a first layer, said first group of metallic wires running in a first direction;
b) a second group of metallic wires formed in a second layer, said second layer above said first layer, said second group of metallic wires running in a second direction that is different than said first direction;
c) a first electrode of a vertical capacitor comprising a first group of vertically aligned metallic wires each running in a same direction, said first electrode above said first and second layers, said second electrode above said first and second layers;
d) a second electrode of said vertical capacitor comprising a second group of vertically aligned metallic wires each running in said same direction, said second electrode above said first and second layers.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.