RICE: rapid interconnect circuit evaluator

This paper describes RICE, an RLC interconnect evaluation tool based upon the moment-matching technique of Asymptotic Waveform Evaluation (AWE). The RLC circuit moments are calculated by a path-tracing algorithm which enables the analysis of large interconnect models several thousand times faster than a circuit simulation while requiring 5 to 10 times less memory. RICE also includes a new approach for determining the circuit dominant time-constants which avoids the inherent instability problems associated with moment matching methods in general.

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