Anasim

Anasim offers its power integrity aware chip/system floor plan designer pi-fp to individual users under a public license as indicated below.

pi-fp by Anasim Corp. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

pi-fp, written in C++, has been developed as a project in the Qt development environment. A prerequisite to run the software quickly is therefore the Qt SDK, available freely from Nokia®. To run pi-fp, or to edit its code components, extract the download file below (pifpgui10c.zip) in the chosen work directory (or C:\ in a Windows™ system), start Qt Creator, and load project pifp.pro found in the extracted sub-directory (pifpgui). Choose a “Release” build option (or the “Debug” option, which will run the application slower), build and run the software in Qt Creator to launch pi-fp’s GUI.

An “examples” sub-directory also extracted from the download archive contains test schematics. pi-fp views from a test example (twochip.pfp) are shown below. This example is a simple simulation of two chip power grids interconnected by vias and transmission lines to an external voltage source with an area current source (seen as a small square block between t-lines in the schematic view) in one chip functioning as the noise source.

Figure 1: pi-fp schematic view of the two-chip example

Figure 2: 3D interconnection view

Figure 3: 3D grid voltage variation results view

pi-fp simulation results data for grids and t-lines can be found in ascii data sets stored in a “run sub-directory” created in the schematic sub-directory (C:\pifpgui\examples in this case). Additional data visualization is facilitated by GNUPLOT scripts (you will need gnuplot or wgnuplot, freely available) also written out by the program in the run sub-directory. A simulation LOG (one of the display window tabs) lists out the pi-fp netlist (details in the Simulation Manual) for the schematic drawn and simulation progress as well.

The pi-fp GUI is designed to be intuitive and relatively easy to use for those familiar with electronic CAD tools. The mouse scroll wheel zooms in and out of 3D views, and left/right mouse buttons activate typical functions. Clicking on schematic objects brings up entry boxes for electrical parameters such as resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Users are invited to contact us for clarification of any of the GUI features currently built into pi-fp, as well as to explore partnering toward further development.

Note that pi-fp is intended to be an early or front-end physical design optimization tool. We’ve used pi-fp to answer questions on spatio-temporal voltage droop variation, optimal shape/placement of on-chip capacitance, global power grid wire sizing/pitch, shorting of power domains, chip/system power grid resonance, etc.