Evaluation of Sequential Circuit Resilience in Early Design Stages

Future technologies are more sensitive to manufacturing and environmental variations as process technology scaling intensifies the influences of physical effects, e.g. random dopant fluctuations. To better consider these effects also in early design stages new models are required that allow to evaluate the influence of these effects. This papers demonstrates the development of an analytical model for evaluation of the influence of technology-level effects in sequential circuits. The model targets design decisions at the early RT level before synthesis and technology mapping takes place. The proposed model has an simple structure with 1st and 2nd order polynomials. Using the model the influence of supply voltage variation, process variation, device temperature, and aging on sequential circuits can be evaluated. The quality of the model is tested with a variety of data of different sequential circuits. Except for some outliers the model fits the data within a maximum relative error of 5% for all circuits.     «

Future technologies are more sensitive to manufacturing and environmental variations as process technology scaling intensifies the influences of physical effects, e.g. random dopant fluctuations. To better consider these effects also in early design stages new models are required that allow to evaluate the influence of these effects. This papers demonstrates the development of an analytical model for evaluation of the influence of technology-level effects in sequential circuits. The model target...     »