Effects of Coupling Capacitance and Inductance on Delay Uncertainty and Clock Skew

With the continuous increase of circuit density, interconnect length, and aspect ratio, the influence of capacitive and inductive coupling on timing characteristics of integrated circuits has become very critical. In this paper, the effects of capacitive and inductive coupling on delay uncertainty and clock skew have been analyzed. Analytical observations and simulation results show that coupling capacitance and mutual inductance have opposite impacts on delay and clock skew variations. It is illustrated that while capacitive coupling worsens both variations, growing inductive coupling can actually counter-balance the negative impacts to some degree.