Power Integrity Analysis and Discrete Optimization of Decoupling Capacitors on High Speed Power Planes by Particle Swarm Optimization

Jai Narayan Tripathi1 , Raj Kumar Nagpal2 , Nitin Kumar Chhabra2 , Rakesh Malik2 , Jayanta Mukherjee1 , Prakash R. Apte1 1 Dept. of EE, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, INDIA. 2 TR&D, STMicroelectronics Pvt. Ltd., Greater Noida, INDIA. E-mail1 : {jai,jayanta,apte}@ee.iitb.ac.in E-mail2 : {rajkumar.nagpal,nitin.chhabra,rakesh.malik}@st.com

Abstract Power Integrity problem for a high speed power plane is discussed in context of selection and placement of decoupling capacitors. The s-parameters data of power plane geometry and capacitors are used for the accurate analysis including bulk capacitors and VRM, for a real world problem. The optimal capacitors and their optimum locations on the board are found using particle swarm optimization. A novel and accurate methodology is presented which can be used for any high speed Power delivery Network. Index Terms Power Integrity, Power Delivery Networks, Decoupling Capacitors, S-parameters, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).

I. Introduction In high speed systems, the power delivery network design becomes critical in order to supply noise suppressed power to the core and i/o circuits. Power Integrity (PI) is a high speed issue concerned with Power Delivery Networks (PDNs), which ensures sufcient and efcient power supply within a system [1]. If power integrity is not maintained in a high speed system, the power supply noise may exceed above the specied allowable ripple and thus may affect the functionality of the system which is designed to work for the predened noise margins. To, maintain power integrity in a PDN, the maximum allowable impedance should be lesser than the target impedance, which is ratio of allowable voltage ripple to the maximum transient current of the system. Ztarget =
(voltage(pp))(%ripple/100) Imaxtran

This paper takes into account the decoupling network in a PDN which consists of decoupling capacitors. The frequency ranges in which the decoupling network affects a PDN is typically hundreds of MHz. Decoupling capacitors are conventionally placed as near as possible, to the package pins [3]. Recent studies have shown that the best position to place decoupling capacitors are not always near to the package pins [4][5]. There are various papers available in literature which use stochastic methods such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Cuckoo Search etc., to nd the optimum positions and values of decoupling capacitors [6][7][8]. Unlike the earlier work, this paper presents the practical solution of the industrial problem of discrete optimization for nding the suitable decoupling capacitors (provided with their s-parameter les) and their best positions from the available positions on the board. Novelties in this work are : 1) The methodology for decoupling optimization is based on the s-parameters models of the decoupling capacitors as practically available from the various manufacturers instead of rlc models adopted in tandem. 2) Using s-parameters data for board and package to take into account the effects of via, pad and anti-pads. 3) Solving the optimization problem for PDN, after taking into effect of bulk capacitors, VRM, and package in order to increase the efciency and accuracy. 4) Finding the trajectory of the particles in PSO when the s-parameters data is used, unlike the r,l,c ranges taken in the earlier papers. 5) Interpolating the data of capacitor bank before using it for optimization, if the frequency range of the board is not the same as that of the s-parameters le from the capacitor bank. 6) Explaining the rationale behind choosing the frequency range of decoupling network analysis. The approximate rlc models of the decoupling capacitor do not take into account the nonlinear behavior of the capacitors at higher frequencies while s-parameters models do. The rlc models of the capacitors are dened at one spot frequency or a narrow band, instead of broader range. 14th Int'l Symposium on Quality Electronic Design

(1)

A PDN consists of many components such as Voltage Regulator Module (VRM), Bulk Capacitors, Board, Decoupling Capacitors, Package. Power is supplied from VRM, through board and package. There are capacitive and inductive effects associated with all of these components of PDN which impacts the system in different frequency ranges. The impedance of a PDN is dened by the the cumulative effect of all these impedances. These capacitive and inductive behaviors of components cause resonance and anti-resonance patterns in a PDN, which deteriorates the power supply quality and increases the ripples[2]. To avoid this, the impedance of the PDN should be lower than the target impedance. 978-1-4673-4953-6/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

670

II. Power Delivery Network The main components of the power delivery network are the die, package, the PCB planes, decoupling capacitors, bulk capacitors, and the voltage regulator module. The decoupling capacitors help the voltage regulator supply current when there is high demand of current into the chip by supplying the charge stored in them. In a typical PDN, the electrolytic bulk capacitors are effective only at very low frequencies (<10 MHz), the high frequency ceramic decoupling capacitors are effective up to a hundreds of MHz and the package decoupling capacitors can be effective up to a few hundreds of MHz [2]. After this frequency range, the on-die capacitance affects the PDN in the range of GHz. The frequency range of interest for decoupling network is decided by the current transient requirements of the chip, as described in the following subsection. In the earlier published literature, the range of analysis for optimization and analysis of decoupling network is done with bare board only, without taking the effect of bulk capacitors, package and VRM. Though they will not signicantly affect the PDN in the range where the decoupling network is dominant, but all these components will affect the amplitude at the upper and lower limits of the frequency range of analysis taken. The previous research work published in [4][6][7] didnt take into account such analysis with VRM, bulk caps and package, and thus is inaccurate enough.

show that the 99% (-40 dB) of signal strength is within 195 MHz, so the upper range for decoupling network optimization is taken approximately as 200 MHz.

Fig. 2.

Transient current required by the device at the pin of package

Fig. 3.

Power spectral density of current at package pin

Fig. 1. Impedance prole of Bare board and Board with VRM, Bulk Capacitor and Package

B. S-parameters Data Power Planes are the popular structures used in the PDNs. These plane pairs can be modeled by cavity models. For the complicated geometries, the equivalent cavity models based empirical formulae are not effective and accurate. Sparameters le extracted from the measurements or the EDA tools, becomes useful for such case. Fig.4 shows three dimensional view of such a power net in a package. The similar or more complicated structures are in PDN layers of boards. Thus, for accurate PI analysis, the s-parameters data must be used. C. Capacitor Bank The capacitor models used in the earlier work are rlc models [5]-[8]. The rlc models are the approximations of the actual characteristics of the capacitors. Figure 5 shows the comparison of the impedance prole of a capacitor obtained from

Fig. 1 shows the impedance prole of the bare board and the board with VRM, bulk capacitors and package. There is a huge difference in the two proles in terms of resonance and anti-resonance peaks. If the optimized capacitors are selected taking into account bare board only, the analysis will not be accurate when the board will be loaded. A. Current Prole and PSD The amplitude variation of the required current for the power supply decides the target impedance while the PSD of the same decides the frequency range of analysis for decoupling network. Figure 2 shows the transient behavior of current required at the package pin, and g. 3 shows its corresponding Power Spectral Density (PSD). The PSD clearly

P particles generated or dened randomly in a design space. Each particle is assigned a position and an initial velocity. Each particle claims to be a solution of the problem within the search space, intending to attain optimal position. After generating particles, the tness of all the particles is calculated. Fitness is the output parameter of optimization problem, which we want to optimize. Particles move towards the ttest particle and by this process they reach to the optimal solution. After calculating tness of all the particles, the one with the best tness is dened as globally best particle gbest. The movement of all the particles is decided by the surrounding particles. After calculating the tness of all the particles, particles are assigned new velocities and positions according to a set of equations, which are following :
Fig. 4. Power delivery plane and nets in a typical package

vi (t + t) = (t)vi (t) + p1 r1 (xl xi ) + p2 r2 (xg xi ) (1) s-parameters and rlc values. This is the prole of capacitor LLR185C70G105ME01 from Murata Manufacturing Co. The r,l,c values (ESR of 100 m and ESL of 120 pH) are taken from the data sheet and the s-parameters le is obtained from vendors website [9][10]. There is clearly a difference between the two proles. The maximum difference is in hundreds of ohms at lower frequency range, even at high frequencies, second order effects will be visible only in s-parameter models and not in linear rlc models as generally adopted in analysis.To avoid the inaccuracies involved in rlc models, we have used s-parameters data in this analysis. xi (t + t) = xi (t) + vi (t + t)t (t) = (i f ). tmax t + f tmax (2) (3)

In above equations, vi (t) is the velocity of a particle, xi (t) is the position of the particle, and (t) is weighing factor, all at time t. The velocity and position of a particle may be vector depending on the dimension of the particle. Equation 1 shows the calculation for new velocity of a particle for next iteration and equation 2 shows the same for the position of the particle in next iteration. Weighing factor is updated (reduced) after each iteration according equation 3. The bold characters in the above equations stand for vectors. For more details of PSO, readers are requested to refer [7], [11]-[14]. The dynamics of convergence of particles is elborated mathematically in [15]. IV. Optimization Methodology A real world problem (industrial case study) is presented with the proposed methodology. The methodology aims to nd the optimal number of capacitors, their values and their positions on the board, in order to meet the target impedance of the system. The methodology is based on impedance prole generation from s-parameters data for the complex geometry of the multilayer board and the given bank of capacitors. The steps followed in this methodology are : 1) Extraction of s-parameters of multilayer board and package from the design database. 2) Including the effects of VRM, bulk capacitor, board and package to nd composite system impedance prole. 3) Generation of decoupling capacitor bank (z-proles) from their given s-parameters proles provided by different vendors. 4) Indexing and ordering the capacitor bank, according to the resonance points in their impedance proles. 5) Indexing the coordinates of the available ports on the board, based on their relative positioning. 6) Applying PSO in iterative loop to achieve the target impedance.

Fig. 5. Impedance proles of a cap obtained from s-parameters and rlc model

III. Particle Swarm Optimization Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is a metaheuristic optimization technique belonging to the group of algorithms inspired by the nature. Introduced by Kennedy and Eberhart in 1995, PSO is inspired by the movement of shes while schooling and the same of the birds while ocking. The shes or birds follow the group behavior and the collective intelligence is used for the movement of the entire swarm. In this optimization technique, a basic entity is called particle, which follows a trajectory based on the past memory, to nd the solution for the given problem. In PSO, there are

The cumulative z-parameter matrix of a board loaded with decaps can be given by the following formula [4].
1 Zef f = (Z 1 + Zdecap )1

(4)

Where the z-parameters matrix of the board is Z and Zdecap is the diagonal matrix in which the diagonal elements are associated with the impedance of the decoupling capacitors on the ports corresponding to the diagonal elements while all other elements are zero. The problem with the above formula appears when the decoupling capacitors on the board are lesser than the available number of ports. In that case, one or more number of diagonal elements of matrix Zdecap are zero, which will not allow the inverse of it. To avoid this problem, we used y-parameters for that step particularly. The analysis is carried out for a high speed serial link board. The extracted sparameters le was having 39 ports. There are 39 ports in the board from which 4 ports are reserved, one for VRM and 3 for bulk capacitors, while one of the ports is the observation port where the package pin is connected. Thus, there are 34 ports available while dening or initializing the ports for decoupling capacitors. There are thousands of capacitors (3702 for this study) used for creating the bank. For dening the particles, the s-parameters data and the port numbers were used. Each particle has two dimensions corresponding to one capacitor, one for the capacitor number from the capacitor bank and one for the port number on the board. If the particle is using multiple capacitors, the dimension of it will be multiple of two to the number of capacitors. Suppose if each available port has one capacitor from the capacitor bank for meeting the target impedance of the system, the total possible combinations will be 370234 10121 which will be practically impossible for available computing systems. A. Movements of particles The particles in this case study are multidimensional and can have discrete values only. If one of the dimensions of a particle is some capacitor number or a port number, after the the next iteration it should avail only the feasible values which should be some port number (integer values between 5 and 39 except 33) or capacitor number (integer value between 1 and 3702) depending on the dimension. In PSO, in order to move the particles for iterations, there must be a varying directional vector depending upon locally best and globally best particles. Here, in the case of capacitors, they are sorted according to their resonance points. Each decoupling capacitor available in the market, has ESR and ESL values associated with it, which cause the resonance behavior. Fig. 6 shows the impedance proles of three capacitors with different resonance points. We have used the resonance points of the decoupling capacitors for the movement of the dimensions of the particle with which the capacitor numbers are associated. For example, if a capacitor as one of the dimensions of the globally best particle in one iteration is having resonance at 40 MHz and one of the dimensions of another particle is having its resonance as 180 MHz, the later one will move randomly towards the capacitors having value between 40 MHz and 180 MHz. In the case of particle dimensions concerned with the port numbers, the movement is decided by the distance between the

Fig. 6. Resonance points of various capacitors dened for guiding the movement of particles

ports which are found by the coordinates of them. A particle will move to the global best particle and it can avail any value or port number (based on random variables dened by PSO) which is having lesser distance than that from the globally best particle. B. Interpolation and other issues The S-parameters les of the capacitor provided by a vendor were having a set of frequency points, while the same was different in case of a different vendor. Additionally, the Sparameters les of the system (VRM, bulk, package, board) was having a different points of frequency. Thus to calculate the impedance of the system after placing capacitor became difcult. To solve this problem, interpolation was used and the frequency points for the S-parameters for all the capacitors were dened according to the frequency points given in the S-parameters le of system. The combined impedance matrix Zef f , after placing the decoupling capacitor on a board can be found by the formula shown in the previous section. But if the number of capacitors are not equal to the number of ports or the dimension of the Z matrix, then all the diagonal elements in the matrix Zdecap will not be non-zero. When taken inverse, this will provide the value of determinant zero resulting in a singular matrix. Thus this formula cant be used in its present form so Yparameters based addition was used. The conversion from Sparameters to Y-parameters (for Zdecap ) was also a problem in case of capacitor les though there are formulae available for the same. The capacitors S-parameters were given in shunt mode as shown in g. 7. In shunt conguration all the four values of the Z-parameters for a capacitor are same thus the inverse is not possible if used as a matrix and thus the Yparameters cant be found in that case. In that case, the value of the z11 was inversed. C. Experiments The maximum current of the system is 20 mA, supply voltage is 1.2 V and the tolerance is 3% so the target

Fig. 7.

Finding S-parameters of a capacitor in shunt conguraion

impedance for the system is 1.8 . The frequency range of interest for the analysis is 200 MHz as discussed in the previous section. Thus the impedance after placing decoupling capacitors should be lesser than 1.8 at all the frequencies lesser than 200 MHz. The optimal number of capacitors (N ) needed to achieve this, their name from the capacitor bank and their optimum locations are to be found. For applying PSO to this problem, 50 particles were initialized with maximum number of iterations as 20. The coefcients p1 and p2 were taken as 1.49 each, from [11] and similarly i and f as 0.9 and 0.4. Each capacitor has two dimensions associated with it, one for its number in capacitor bank and the other one for its port number. Each particle was representing N capacitors s-parameters les and their corresponding port numbers. If the target is not met by N capacitors, PSO is repeated by expanding the dimensions of each particle (i.e. adding one more capacitor) till the target is met. The steps used for applying PSO are as following : Pseudo-Code for Optimization using PSO : 1) Importing the cumulative S-parameters le of the board, VRM, bulk capacitor, and package; and arranging them in a matrix. 2) Importing the S-parameters le from capacitor bank and arranging them in matrix form. 3) Interpolating the S-parameters of the capacitors, according to the frequency points in the cumulative Sparameters le of the board, VRM, package and bulk capacitors. 4) Dene maximum number of iterations Tmax , dimension D = 2, number of capacitors N = D/2. 5) Loop 1 : While Zgbest ZT . 6) For D dimensions , generate P particles, their respective positions x(i, j ) and velocities v(i, j ); i {1, 2, ., P } and j {1, 2, ....D}, within the lower and upper bounds. 7) Calculate the impedance proles for all the particles as 1 1 Zef fi = (Zi +Zdecap )1 where each particle contains i decoupling capacitors and their respective port numbers. 8) Calculate the maximum impedance peak max imp(i) corresponding to all the Zef fi of all i particles. 9) Loop 2 : while Number of iterations t = t Tmax . 10) Loop 3 : for i = 1 to P 11) Loop 4 : for j = 1 to D 12) Update inertia, velocities and positions max )t = (i f ) (TT + f max v(i, j, t) = (t)v(i, j, t 1) + p1 r1 (lbest(i, j ) x(i, j, t 1) + p2 r2 (gbest x(i, j )

x(i, j, t) = x(i, j, t 1) + v(i, j, t) 13) Limit the positions and velocities within the lower and upper bounds. 14) Update lbest(i,j) for all the particles. 15) END : Loop 4 16) End : Loop 3 17) Update gbest for each iteration. 18) Increment the counter for next iteration t = t + 1 19) END : Loop 2 20) Increase the Dimension of the particles D = D + 2, by adding one more capcitor N = N + 1. 21) END:Loop 1 22) Final Solution = gbest. D. Results The number of capacitors N needed to meet the target impedance were 4. The particles converged to a solution which is shown in table I. In the table, four capacitor and their best positions which were found by the algorithm, and their details like their serial numbers in capacitor bank and their manufacturers are given. When used these capacitors at the given ports, the prole of the PDN was below the target impedance 1.75 . The maximum impedance observed from the port 33 was 1.716 at 200 MHz. Thus, the optimization problem is solved by PSO. Fig.9 shows the ow used for this optimization process, which is generic methodology and can be used for high speed systems. The PSO based engine in g. 9, is explained in the pseudo-code in previous section. For 4 capacitors, the possible combinations were > 1014 .
TABLE I The capacitors and their locations Serial No. in Capacitor Bank 1 3702 2658 65

S.No. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Capacitor Name GJ821BB31H105KA12 TWAE687M050 TPSB336K006R0450 GRM033B31C332KA87

Manufa -cturer Murata AVX AVX Murata

Port Number 16 36 16 26

Fig. 8.

PDN impedance with and without decaps

V. Conclusion A real world discrete optimization problem for power integrity has been solved by particle swarm optimization. Optimum capacitors and their ports on the board are found. The analysis was done using by s-parameter les for more accuracy and to attain realistic approach. A generic methodology is developed for similar power integrity analysis and decoupling network design for any high speed system.

[13] X. S. Yang, Engineering Optimization: An Introduction with Metaheuristic Applications, Wiley & Sons, New Jersey, (2010). [14] M. Fakhfakh et al, Analog Circuit Design Optimization through the Particle Swarm Optimization Technique, Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, 63:71-82, Aug. 2009. [15] M. Clerc, J. Kennedy, The particle swarm - explosion, stability, and convergence in a multidimensional complex space, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 6 , issue 1, pp. 58 - 73, Feb 2002.

Fig. 9.

Generic Methodology for PDN Optimization

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