Pattern-independent current estimation for reliability analysis of CMOS circuits
Richard Burch, Farid N. Najm, Ping Yang, D.E. Hocevar · 1988
Accurate and efficient expected current estimation is required in circuit designs to analyze electromigration failure rate, power consumption, voltage drop, etc. A new patternindependent simulation approach for estimating this expected current waveform drawn by CMOS circuitry has been developed. Four original concepts, probability waveforms, probability waveform propagation, probabilistic circuit models, and statistical timing analysis, are presented which allows an efficient and accurate estimation of expected current waveforms. This approach is dramatically faster than traditional methods and yields comparable results. Topics : 1, 16, 12. I. INTRODUCTION The quality of an integrated circuit is measured by both functional and reliability standards. Many simulation approaches exist to verify that a design will meet functional specifications; however, present capabilities for verifying that a design will meet reliability specifications are extremely limited. At Texas Instruments, much...