CNN-Cap: Effective Convolutional Neural Network Based Capacitance Models for Full-Chip Parasitic Extraction

TL;DR

This paper introduces CNN-Cap, a convolutional neural network model that significantly improves the accuracy and speed of full-chip capacitance extraction for integrated circuit design, outperforming traditional methods.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel CNN-based approach with a grid-based data representation for efficient and accurate capacitance modeling of 2-D structures in chip design.

Findings

Total capacitance error within 1.3%

Coupling capacitance error less than 10% in over 99.5% cases

Over 4000X faster than 2-D field solver

Abstract

Accurate capacitance extraction is becoming more important for designing integrated circuits under advanced process technology. The pattern matching based full-chip extraction methodology delivers fast computational speed, but suffers from large error, and tedious efforts on building capacitance models of the increasing structure patterns. In this work, we propose an effective method for building convolutional neural network (CNN) based capacitance models (called CNN-Cap) for two-dimensional (2-D) structures in full-chip capacitance extraction. With a novel grid-based data representation, the proposed method is able to model the pattern with a variable number of conductors, so that largely reduce the number of patterns. Based on the ability of ResNet architecture on capturing spatial information and the proposed training skills, the obtained CNN-Cap exhibits much better performance over the multilayer perception neural network based capacitance model while being more versatile. Extensive experiments on a 55nm and a 15nm process technologies have demonstrated that the error of total capacitance produced with CNN-Cap is always within 1.3% and the error of produced coupling capacitance is less than 10% in over 99.5% probability. CNN-Cap runs more than 4000X faster than 2-D field solver on a GPU server, while it consumes negligible memory compared to the look-up table based capacitance model.