Power distribution network modeling for 3-D ICs with TSV arrays

A coupling node insertion method (CNIM) is proposed to handle electrical coupling between top metals of on-chip interconnects and silicon substrate surfaces in three-dimensional integrated circuits (3-D ICs). This coupling effect should not be neglected especially as metal area is intentionally increased in order to reduce resistance values. In this paper, we illustrate how to build the CNIM model and incorporate it into power distribution networks. The CNIM model is validated by comparing our results to the one obtained from a full-wave simulator. The differences between two approaches are within 5% but our computation time is shorter than that required by a full-wave simulator.