Post-silicon power mapping techniques for integrated circuits

We propose a new methodology for post-silicon power validation using the captured thermal infrared emissions from the back-side of operational integrated circuits. We first identify the challenges associated with thermal to power inversion, and then we address these challenges by devising a quadratic optimization formulation that incorporates Tikhonov filtering techniques to find the most accurate power maps. To validate our methodology, a programmable circuit of micro-heaters is implemented to create a number of reference power maps. The thermal emissions from the circuit are captured using an infrared camera and then inverted to yield highly accurate post-silicon power maps. & 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.