SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will determine scientific, technical, and commercial merit and feasibility of developing an ultra-fast signal integrity analyzer for multi-layer integrated-circuit chip packages and printed circuit boards. Ever increasing integrated-circuit transition speed and packaging density have posed severe challenge to electronic packaging designs. Accurate signal integrity analysis necessitates electromagnetic field simulations to be performed together with circuit simulations. Existing general-purpose commercial electromagnetic tools are unable to provide timely and cost effective solutions for practical electronic packages. This project will investigate a novel method that would be orders of - magnitude faster than conventional general-purpose tools in performing electromagnetic simulation in electronic packages. With the new technique, three-dimensional electromagnetic fields in multi-layer electronic packages are decomposed into several most significant modes, and each mode of field is solved with special fast algorithms. The proposed signal integrity analyzer integrates the fast electromagnetic field solver with transmission line and circuit solvers so that interactions between packages and IC chips are automatically taken into account. Applicability of the technique and feasibility of the proposed signal integrity analyzer for real-world packaging structures are to be investigated in this project. It is anticipated that the technique described in this proposal can dramatically reduce the electromagnetic field simulation time and lead to commercial signal integrity tools that can provide timely and cost effective means for the evaluation and design of electronic packages and printed circuit boards. Such signal integrity tools are crucial for emerging high-speed electronic systems, and should have significant and immediate impacts once they are commercially available.

The aim of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project from SIGRITY is to develop an ultra-fast signal integrity analyzer for multi-layer integrated-circuit (IC) chip packages and printed circuit boards. It has been demonstrated that electromagnetic fields in multi-layer electronic packages can be decomposed into several most significant modes, and each mode of field is solved with special fast algorithms. The proposed signal integrity analyzer integrates a fast electromagnetic field solver with transmission line and circuit solvers so those interactions between packages and IC chips are automatically taken into account. Ever increasing integrated-circuit transition speed and packaging density have posed severe challenges to the design of high performance electronic packages. It is generally accepted today that package performance is one of the major limiting factors of the overall system performance. Accurate signal integrity analysis of electronic packages demands electromagnetic field simulation. Existing commercial electromagnetic tools, however, are unable to provide timely and cost effective solutions for the design of practical package structures. This project is anticipated to achieve a prototype signal integrity tool that would be orders of magnitude faster than present commercial tools. In this Phase II project, simulation schemes will be further developed and implemented in the prototype software tool to handle various issues in practical packages. These issues include the modeling of loss metal planes and signal conductors; computation of electromagnetic radiation from packages; simulation of nonlinear devices described in Input/Output Buffer Information Specification (IBIS) format; and loading package geometry descriptions from data files of standard formats. Fast and accurate signal integrity tools should significantly benefit the electronic packaging design necessary to advance the U.S. electronics industry. The proposed research will lea d to commercial signal integrity tools that can provide timely and cost-effective means for accurate evaluation and design of electronic packages and printed circuit boards. These signal integrity tools are essential for the design of future high-speed electronic systems.