Statistical Modelling of Microelectronic System Timing Behaviour
Grh Bishop · 1987
If designers are to take full advantage of the opportunity to produce digital systems, (offered to them by the Mead & Conway method of designing VLSI circuits), then they need to be able to predict the proportion of their circuits that will work at the required speed. They are inhibited in this regard due to the excessive expense presently incurred in attempting to do this. First this paper demonstrates the necessity for this design tool. Then it examines and discards possible software methods of implementing it. Then the possible hardware methods are examined and one of them, an analogue method, is rejected as impractical. The only remaining feasible method, a digital method which uses an array processor containing transistor models (an SIMD mesh-connected computer system) is proposed and examined in some detail, and the results of simulation of such a system are presented.