Emulating and Diagnosing IR-Drop by Using Dynamic SDF

The Standard Delay Format (SDF) information is very important in timing-aware simulation of VLSI designs. However, conventionally, SDF is only design-dependent, but pattern-independent, which is called static SDF in this paper. Static SDF ignores all dynamic pattern dependent parameters, such as IR drop and crosstalk. In this paper, we propose a novel pattern-dependent SDF (called dynamic SDF) generation technique, and apply it to take IR-drop effects into consideration. With the proposed IR-drop-aware SDF generation technique, we improve the accuracy of simulation, and perform diagnosis on the failed patterns to pin point the pattern-dependent IR-drop defects in our design. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of this method when used for transition delay fault pattern application and diagnosis.