Fast Design Optimization Through Simple Kriging Metamodeling: A Sense Amplifier Case Study

Due to the increasing complexity of nanoscale CMOS circuits and systems integration, full SPICE simulations for silicon accurate results can have run times in the order of days or weeks. This paper presents a methodology that uses a simple Kriging metamodeling technique capable of modeling the correlation effects between parameters, and a simulated annealing algorithm for ultrafast design optimization. The proposed methodology is applied to a clamped bitline amplifier circuit, which shows promising results for increased accuracy in process-aware metamodeling techniques. The error of the metamodels is very small, which is generated in 10.5 min compared to the 72 h taken for an exhaustive simulation. The design optimization performed on the metamodels improves the precharge time of the circuit by 61.15%.