Power Integrity(PI)
WHY Power Integrity (PI) Simulation?
- Basic electrical system design requires one or more power supply voltages to operate. These are mostly generated by Voltage Regulator Modules (VRMs). These VRMs are designed to deliver the desired voltages to the various load devices. Power supply and its delivery path must meet the load voltage ripple requirements. Power integrity analysis can help you to optimize each power plane by evaluating the voltage drop and noise from Power distribution Network (PDN) to make sure your product operates normally.
WHAT Benefits of Power Integrity (PI) Simulation?
- As supply voltages continue to decrease and transistor count follows Moore’s law growing, power distribution network (PDN) has become an important consideration for any electronic product design. Bad PDN design will cause excessive voltage drop and power noise in your product. Prediction of the PDN performance by PI simulation is critical to ensure electronic products function as specified and meet battery life expectations.
WHEN Do You Need Power Integrity (PI) Analysis?
- When the design contains high-speed processors or components that have high current demand and fast switching frequencies, PI plays a major role in the success and failure of the product. Power integrity simulation can be performed in AC (Alternating Current) or DC (Direct Current) analysis.
Our PI Simulation Service & Experience:
PI-DC Analysis (also called IR-drop analysis)
PI-DC analysis computes the IR drop (voltage drop), current density, and power loss density in the power supply nets. Using this analysis, it can identify how much current is consumed by IC, connector pins or stitching vias at DC operating conditions. If the power plane has too big voltage drop, the power supply voltage at the IC might fall below the allowed minimum voltage to cause abnormal work.
- Voltage drop (find hot-spot location)
- Current density (find copper areas and stitching via with excessive current)
- DC resistance (measure power plane resistance for critical layout location)
- Power loss (measure power dissipation on the power and ground nets)
- Temperature dependent option (consider electrical-thermal co-analysis)
PI-AC analysis (also called decoupling capacitor optimize analysis)
PI-AC analysis computes the impedance for the IC power planes over a certain frequency range. It can identify whether the PDN provides a low impedance path from the VRM to the IC power pin. Excessive impedance can generate huge power noise, and will pass through the system PDN to power plane when core has input-output switching to let IC fail to work.
- PDN impedance (measure how much power plane noise ripple)
- Decoupling capacitor optimization (find cost-effective capacitor combination)
- PDN transfer impedance (measure how much power noise coupling between two power plane)
- Power plane resonance analysis (find resonance location that have the potential high field strength)
- Capacitor loop inductance (qualify whether the capacitor is placed effectively)
Simulation Tools
 |
 |
 |