On-chip decoupling capacitor design to reduce switching-noise-induced instability in CMOS/SOI VLSI

The switching noise of CMOS/SOI is studied using the OCD (off-chip driver) circuits. The OCD circuits which send out data off the chip in a wide bit bus structure often represent the worse case of switching noise. The CMOS/SOI circuit is designed to operate at 3.3 V off-chip power supply. It is shown that the supply noise from the packaging of CMOS/SOI circuits can cause degradation, reliability reduction and even loss of circuit functionality due to device latch-up problem. By properly adding on-chip decoupling capacitors in the proximity of the circuitry, it shown that the switching noise problem can be effectively alleviated and the performance of CMOS/SOI circuits can be improved.