Verification of the Power and Ground Grids Under General and Hierarchical Constraints

As part of power distribution network verification, one should check if the voltage fluctuations exceed some critical threshold. The traditional simulation-based solution to this problem is intractable due to the large number of possible circuit behaviors. This approach also requires full knowledge of the details of the underlying circuitry, not allowing one to verify the power distribution network early in the design flow.

Contrary to previous work on power distribution network verification, we consider the power and ground (P/G) grids together and describe an early verification approach under the framework of current constraints. Then, we present a solution technique in which tight lower and upper bounds on worst case voltage fluctuations are computed via linear programs. Experimental results indicate that the proposed technique results in errors in the range of a few millivolts. In addition to P/G grid verification techniques, we also provide very efficient solution technique to power (single) grid verification under hierarchical current constraints.

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