Addressing noise decoupling in mixed-signal IC's: power distribution design and cell customization

An important and largely unexplored aspect of power distribution synthesis is cell customization. Through automatic cell customization, power I/O cell assignments and local substrate and power supply decoupling may be tailored to reduce deleterious noise effects on analog circuits in mixed-signal environments. Techniques for simultaneous power grid design (topology and sizing) and cell configuration/customization are described that allow designers to handle more difficult chip-level noise problems. Synthesis results on an industrial mixed-signal example demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.< >