US 8,554,529 B2Granted

Black box model for large signal transient integrated circuit simulation

AssigneeTexas Instruments Incorporated

InventorsYuri Mirgorodski, Peter J. Hopper, William French, Philipp Lindorfer

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Abstract

A method of simulating an integrated circuit device under test (DUT) is provided, wherein the DUT includes a plurality of terminals. For each terminal of the DUT, a probe pulse is applied to the terminal and a reaction is recorded at the terminal and each of the other terminals to obtain values representative of reactive tails for the terminal. For each terminal, the values representative of the reactive tails obtained for the terminal are stored as an entry of a look-up table. Each entry includes n+x fields, wherein n represents a number of arguments in the entry and x represents a number of functions in the entry. For each terminal, a signal value at a selected time step is calculated.

Claims9

Dependent claims

A method of simulating an integrated circuit device under test (“DUT”), wherein the DUT includes at least first and second terminals, the method comprising:

applying first and second probe pulses to the first and second terminals, respectively, and recording time-dependent reactions of the first and second terminals in response thereto, wherein the time-dependent reactions have decay times and are recorded in table entries that store information about the first and second probe pulses;
using the table entries to calculate, by a device, first reactions of the first and second terminals in response to values of the first and second terminals at a first time step;
and
using the table entries to calculate, by the device, second reactions of the first and second terminals in response to values of the first and second terminals at a second time step;
wherein at least one of the first reactions has a respective decay that is longer than the first time step and continues during the second time step and contributes to at least one of the second reactions;
wherein the first and second reactions include steady-state components and time-dependent components;
wherein using the table entries to calculate the steady-state components of the second reactions includes performing interpolation from the table entries in response to the values of the first and second terminals at the second time step;
and
wherein using the table entries to calculate the time-dependent components of the second reactions includes performing summation from the table entries in response to the values of the first and second terminals at the second time step and in response to the first reactions.

6 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.