Improved Boundary Element Method for Fast 3-D Interconnect Resistance Extraction

Abstract

Efficient extraction of interconnect parasitic parameters has become very important for present deep submicron designs. In this paper, the improved boundary element method (BEM) is presented for 3-D interconnect resistance extraction. The BEM is accelerated by the recently proposed quasi-multiple medium (QMM) technology, which quasicuts the calculated region to enlarge the sparsity of the overall coefficient matrix to solve. An un-average quasi-cutting scheme for QMM, advanced nonuniform element partition and technique of employing the linear element for some special surfaces are proposed. These improvements considerably condense the computational resource of the QMM-based BEM without loss of accuracy. Experiments on actual layout cases show that the presented method is several hundred to several thousand times faster than the well-known commercial software Raphael, while preserving the high accuracy. key words: interconnect resistance, fast extraction, improved boundary element method

The application of boundary element method to the resistance calculation problem in designing flat panel displays

“…To calculate the resistance of a wire spanning two layers, we can extend the divide‐and‐conquer approach used in this paper by separating the metal‐layer‐to‐metal‐layer connection region. That region can be simulated with a 3D resistance solver based on BEM, while the left same‐metal‐layer segments are solved with Res2d . Therefore, we can efficiently obtain the total resistance with satisfactory accuracy.…”

“…They can be calculated with a simple square‐counting approach. For other complex structures, for example, that around the via connecting different metal layers, numerical methods are employed for the resistance calculation . Currently, there is no resistance calculation technique specialized for the wiring structures in FPD.…”