Sparse and efficient reduced order modeling of linear subcircuits with large number of terminals

Abstract

In the process of designing state-of-the art VLSI circuit we often encounter large but highly structured linear subcircuits with large number of terminals. Classical examples are power supply networks, clock distribution networks, large data buses, etc. Various applications would benefit from efficient high level models of such networks. Unfortunately the existing model-order-reduction algorithms are not adapted to handle more than a few tens of terminals. This talk introduces RecMOR, an algorithm for the computation of reduced order models of structured linear circuits with numerous I/O ports. The algorithm exploits certain regularities of the subcircuit response that are typical in numerous applications of interest. When these regularities are present, the normally dense matrix-transfer function of the subcircuit contains sub-blocks that in some sense are significantly low rank and can be compactly modeled by the recently introduced SVDMOR algorithm. The new RecMOR algorithm decomposes the large matrix-transfer function recursively, and applies SVDMOR compression adaptively to the subblocks of the transfer function. The result is a reduced order model that is sparse, efficient, and directly usable as an efficient substitute of the subcircuit in circuit simulations. The method is illustrated on several circuit examples. ©2004 IEEE.