Patent ID: 7376914

Claim:
A method for designing a power distribution system, the method comprising: receiving a cross section file that contains the layout of a PCB including a location of one or more power sinks and sources on the PCB; creating an initial power distribution system, wherein the initial power distribution system includes a required connectivity between the power sinks and sources; evaluating the initial power distribution system against a cost function, the cost function including a power dissipation variable, a connectivity variable, and a voltage gradient variable, and represented as: cost = 1 ∑ d = 1 m ⁢ ⁢ w d · ∑ d = 1 m ⁢ ⁢ ( ∑ id = 1 nd ⁢ ⁢ J id d · ( V id d / Vnom d ) ) where Vnom d is the nominal voltage of each domain, nd is the number of testpoints of interest, Vid is the voltage in each testpoint, Jid is the current at the testpoint, and Wd is the total current per domain; creating a new power distribution system, including modifying a size of a segment of the PCB; evaluating the new power distribution system against the cost function; determining if the cost function associated with the new power distribution system is equal to or greater than a stop criterion; and creating another new power distribution system if the cost function associated with the new power distribution system is greater than the stop criterion.