On-chip power integrity evaluation system

Power supply disturbance excited by simultaneous switching output (SSO) circuits or core circuits is a serious issue in a system-in-package (SIP), especially in 3D stacked die package, because much more I/O circuits and core circuits excited simultaneously in synchronized with clock edges than the case of single die package. Therefore, decoupling schemes in such SiP's must be carefully designed including on-chip capacitance as well as off-chip capacitance so as to reduce the impedance of power distribution network (PDN) as low as possible up to high frequency range. In this paper, an on-chip power integrity evaluation system has been established using a test chip with both noise generating circuits and monitoring circuits for on-chip power supply noise. On-chip power integrity has been examined and compared for the cases with and without on-chip capacitance and for the various embedded capacitors inside an interposer.