ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the importance, effects, and issues involved in a transition from an Resistance-capacitance interconnect model to an RLC model, which includes the inductance of the interconnect. Thus, the global wires connecting modules across an integrated circuit have increased in length. Each interconnect line has an associated self-inductance and an associated mutual inductance to other lines in the circuit. Power consumption is an increasingly important design parameter with mobile systems and high performance, high-complexity circuits such as leading edge microprocessors. Lowering delay uncertainty is a positive effect of inductance because narrower switching windows give significant degrees of freedom in physical design to limit noise and control glitches among many other benefits. In a set of inductively and capacitively coupled lines, the signal propagation delay on a particular line reaches a minimum when neighbor lines are switching in the same direction.
