Impact of Transitor Matching on Features of Digital Circuit Blocks

Digital circuit blocks are extracted from full custom digital circuits as units for test structures. The test structures are suited for a statistical evaluation of circuit features like the pre-charge of node voltages of fast decision circuits. A statistical evaluation is needed to account for process variations. The circuit characterization results allow a comparison with statistical device models. Circuit performance is often guaranteed by adding a constant value to a figure of merit as a margin. The constant margin procedure for the circuit performance can be replaced by realistic margins applying the characterization results.