An in situ measurement scheme for generating supply-noise maps, which can be conducted while running applications in product-level LSIs, was developed. The design of the on-chip voltage sampling probe is based on a simple ring oscillator, which converts local supply difference between VDD and VSS to oscillation-frequency deviation. High measurement accuracy is achieved by off-chip digital signal processing and calibration. This scheme was used to successfully measure 69-mV local supply noise with 5-ns time resolution in a 3G-cellular-phone processor. It will thus help in designing power-supply networks and in visually verifying the quality of a power supply
Published in:
Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of
(Volume:42
,
Issue:
4
)
Date of Publication: April 2007