A new three-piece driver model with RLC interconnect load

The scaled down feature size and the increased frequency of today's deep sub-micron region call for fundamental changes in driver-load models. To be more specific, new driver-load models need to take into consideration the nonlinear behavior of the drivers, the inductance effects of the loads, and the slew rates of the output waveforms. Current driver-load models use the conventional single C_eff (one-ramp) approach and treat the interconnect load as lumped RC networks. Neither the non-linear property nor the inductance effects were considered. The accuracy of these existing models is therefore questionable. This paper introduces a new multi-ramp driver model that represents the interconnect load as a distributed RLC network. The employed two effective capacitance values capture the nonlinear behavior of the driver. The lossy transmission line approach accounts for the impact of inductance when modeling the driving point interconnect load. The new model shows improvements of 9% in the average delay error and 2.2% in the slew rate error compared to SPICE.