Variation-Aware Aging Analysis in Digital ICs

Author

Sangwoo Han ; Byung-Su Kim ; Juho Kim

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci. Eng., Sogang Univ., Seoul, South Korea

Volume

21

Issue

12

fYear

2013

fDate

Dec. 2013

Firstpage

2214

Lastpage

2225

Abstract

As CMOS devices become smaller, the process variations (PVs) and aging variations (AVs) become major issues for circuit reliability and yield. In this paper, we analyze the effects of PVs on aging effects such as hot carrier injection (HCI) and negative bias temperature instability (NBTI). Using Monte Carlo-based transistor-level simulations including principal component analysis, the correlations between PVs and AVs are considered, by which the accuracy of analysis is improved (1.2% for standard deviation and 1.7% for Vth_99%) compared to other methods that ignore the correlations, especially in the smaller technology. In addition, we perform regression analysis with various models to improve the efficiency of variation-aware aging analysis. All models show an error rate about 1% for NBTI, and quadratic and custom models show an error rate of about 10% on average for HCI.

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; Monte Carlo methods; error statistics; hot carriers; integrated circuit reliability; integrated circuit yield; negative bias temperature instability; principal component analysis; regression analysis; AV; CMOS devices; HCI; Monte Carlo-based transistor-level simulations; NBTI; PV; aging effects; aging variations; circuit reliability; circuit yield; digital IC; error rate; hot carrier injection; negative bias temperature instability; principal component analysis; process variations; regression analysis; standard deviation; variation-aware aging analysis; Aging; Analytical models; Correlation; Human computer interaction; Integrated circuit modeling; Threshold voltage; Transistors; Aging variation (AV); hot carrier injection (HCI); negative bias temperature instability (NBTI); process variation (PV);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1063-8210

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TVLSI.2012.2228886

Filename

6395840