Efficient and accurate transient simulation in charge-voltage plane

ABSTRACT

Transient simulation has traditionally been performed in current- voltage plane (with current and voltage as variables) for verification of integrated circuits and systems. This paper introduces techniques for efficient and accurate transient simulation in charge-voltage plane (with charge and voltage as variables). For integrated circuits, both simulation cost and overhead to increase accuracy are drastically reduced by performing simulations in charge-voltage plane. Adaptively controlled explicit simulation in charge-voltage plane is used to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. Solution of circuit equations in charge-voltage plane is 10-20 times more efficient than in current-voltage plane. Furthermore, simulation accuracy can be increased at an incremental cost. As a result, ACES in charge-voltage plane provides speedups of 300x-5000x or more over traditional circuit simulators with little or no loss in circuit timing accuracy.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.2 Design Aids
          Subjects: Simulation

Additional Classification:
  J. Computer Applications

General Terms:
Measurement, Theory