As semiconductor devices have gotten ever smaller, competing performance requirements of these devices forces semiconductor manufactures to be conflicted. On the one hand, the market demands that the semiconductor devices, such as those used in mobile communications, have increasingly faster operating speeds. On the other, however, that same market demands that these faster operating speeds be achieved with reduced power consumption. These competing design requirements have forced the industry to try to strike a balance between faster operating speeds and reduced power consumption.
In many high performance electronics devices, the printed circuit board (PCB) typically has a microchip tied into a memory chip, and when the input/output (I/O) of the memory is required to switch faster, it requires more current from the power distribution network. The faster the device switches the more current it pulls from the power distribution network, which results in noise. Moreover, increase in noise has also arisen due to layer reductions made in the package in which the microchip is encased, thereby causing routing congestion in the package. Routing congestion can cause cross-talk issues due to capacitance and inductance coupling, which adds to the noise issues within the system. Because crosstalk can generate significant unwanted noise in nearby lines, causing problems of skew, delay, logic faults, and radiated emission, the crosstalk phenomena is drawing more attention than. If this noise remains unmanaged, it can affect the I/O and functionality of the device. For example, noise can cause the devices to lose data, produce high electromagnetic interference, blow transistors, or cause complete device failure. Manufactures have managed to lower current noise level at the PCB and the high current noise within the microchip.