Parallel Processing Techniques for the Simulation of MOS VLSI Circuits Using Waveform Relaxation

Waveform relaxation algorithms for the simulation of MOS circuits exhibit natural parallelism, arising from the intrinsic partitioning of the circuit into subcircuits which are solved separately during the iterative solution process. Investigated in this thesis is the extent to which the overall run time of a simulation can be reduced by utilizing the natural parallelism of waveform relaxation on parallel processors. Four parallel waveform relaxation algorithms are considered, based on the Gauss-Seidel and Gauss-Jacobi relaxation methods, in which parallelism is exploited at the individual time point level or at the time window level. The algorithm with the fastest run time depends on the characteristics of the circuit being simulated and on the number of processors used. The Gauss-Jacobi method with time point pipelining is introduced as a highly parallel algorithm which can outperform the other algorithms when the number of processors is large.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Smart, David William

Contributors dc:contributor

• Trick, Timothy N.

• Engineering, Electronics and Electrical
• Computer Science

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8908850

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/69421