An On-Chip Waveform Capturer and Application to Diagnosis of Power Delivery in SoC Integration

An on-chip waveform capturer exhibits 8.8-bit effective accuracy at a 5-ps timing resolution and 190 μ V voltage, with an effective bandwidth of 700 MHz in a 65-nm CMOS prototype. Voltage by a digital-to-analog converter with selectable slopes and offsets is linearly translated into timing, that is used for strobing a waveform. Programmable timing and voltage generation as well as selective input channels are intended for exhaustive power noise measurements on power delivery networks (PDNs) across rail-to-rail voltage domains in a chip. The measurement procedures are totally governed by an embedded controller. The waveform capturer, in combination with a PDN exciter, realizes in situ derivation of resonance parameters by assembling oscillatory waveforms. A power noise reduction of more than 50% is accomplished through on-chip PDN diagnosis, in which the operation frequencies are selected such that the periodical appearance of PDN resonance is prevented.