Power Noise Analysis of Large-Scale Printed Circuit Boards

Recent increases in digital-equipment operation frequency and decreases in LSI supply voltage have caused various noise problems relative to LSI, packages (PKG), system in package (SIP), and printed circuit boards (PCBs). These problems entail power-and-ground bounce noise, simultaneous switching noise, and EMI noise. Solving these problems requires a long development period and high costs. The authors have developed a new power noise analysis system as a computer-aided design (CAD) system, and applied it to equipment design. This system optimizes noise countermeasure design by performing large-scale simulation to unify the LSI and PCB design for all stages from the upper stage to the verification stage of final design. We confirmed that this system greatly reduced the time and cost of redesign necessary to solve noise problems. This paper introduces the features of this system, and describes the results of its application to high-end servers.