Cross-Talk Noise Immune VLSI Design Using Regular Layout Fabrics

This book was motivated by the problems being faced with shrinking IC process feature sizes. It is well known that as process feature sizes shrink, a host of electrical problems such as cross-talk, electromigration, self-heat, etc. become important. Cross-talk is one of the major problems since it results in unpredictable design behavior. In particular, it can result in significant delay variation or signal integrity problems in a wire, depending on the state of its neighboring wire. Typical approaches to tackling the cross-talk problem attempt to fix the problem once it is created. This book introduces a framework for cross-talk-free IC design. The main foundation of the book is the use of a predetermined layout pattern on the IC, which we call a `layout fabric'. The authors characterize this fabric and show how it yields cross-talk-immune designs. Two VLSI design flows are introduced which use the fabric concept. One flow is a minimally modified standard-cell based flow. The other flow uses a network of PLAs to implement the circuit. The authors also introduce `wire removal' techniques which improve circuit wire ability and thereby reduce circuit area. The new concepts presented here will be of interest to IC designers and researchers.