Modeling of power distribution systems in PCs

This paper presents an approximate technique for building a model and simulating the response of the power distribution system for high-performance microprocessors. A distributed equivalent circuit is obtained by extracting the appropriate RLCs using a combination of two- and three-dimensional quasi-static field solvers. The model includes the chip, its connection to the package, and the power distribution structure in the package, connector and motherboard. The response of the entire power system is treated as a 2nd order system, by which the performance of the power delivery network is assessed. Samples of transient and frequency domain data for typical microprocessors are given and the effects of some design options are discussed.