Modeling of Complex Power Delivery Networks Driven by Non-Linear Voltage Regulators

Circuit simulation and analysis process is often a tradeoff between accuracy and simulation time. Modeling and simulating non-linear circuits, such as modern voltage regulators (VR) driving a power delivery network (PDN), results in long simulation times. To combat long simulation times of non-linear VRs and a lack of adequate models, a novel methodology is proposed in this paper. The proposed methodology is exploiting the strength of two commercial simulation tools: a general-purpose circuit simulator, HSPICE and a dedicated voltage regulator and power supply simulator named Simulation of Piecewise Linear Systems (SIMPLIS). Specifically, this methodology takes advantage of the availability of accurate switching VR models in SIMPLIS combined with the capability of HSPICE to simulate large and complex multi-port passive networks. The proposed methodology combines the data obtained by both tools into a single set of results that incorporate accurate VR behavior and the complexity of a full PDN model within an acceptable simulation time.