A practical timing-risk analysis method

This paper introduces a simple, practical, and less biased statistical method which can quickly estimate the probability of a circuit failure due to the tolerance buildup of propagation delays. The basic statistical analysis method can be used by a reliability analyst for worst case analysis (WCA). It can help designers to understand the statistical nature of the propagation delay timing problem. Most important of all it can arouse government/industry´s attention that IC propagation delay specifications should be regulated so that the digital circuit design can be improved and the method of WCA can be standardized. The improved methods may be used to predict the inherent reliability of a circuit. Since the Mil-HDBK-217 can only predict the operational reliability of a circuit, the final circuit reliability should be the product of both types of reliability predictions