Stochastic circuit reliability analysis

Stochastic circuit reliability analysis, as described in this work, matches the statistical attributes of underlying device fabrics and transistor aging to the spatial and temporal reliability of an entire circuit. For the first time, spatial and temporal stochastic and deterministic reliability effects are handled together in an efficient framework. The paper first introduces an equivalent transistor SPICE model, comprising the currently most important aging effects (i.e NBTI, hot carriers and soft breakdown). A simulation framework then uses this SPICE model to minimize the number of circuit factors and to build a circuit model. The latter allows for example very fast circuit yield analysis. Using experimental design techniques the proposed method is very efficient and also proves to be very flexible. The simulation technique is demonstrated on an example 6-bit current-steering DAC, where the creation of soft breakdown spots can result in circuit failure due to increasing time-dependent transistor mismatch.