Computation of delay defect and delay fault probabilities using a statistical timing simulator

Using a formal modeling of the signal interactions, a statistical timing simulator capable of detecting delay faults and computing delay defect distributions has been built. This tool produces the delay fault statistics which must be used by delay fault ATPG (automatic test pattern generation) tools if they are to model process-induced delay failures realistically. The most obvious application for this tool is the computation of the probability of failure due to parametric delay faults. For this application, a Monte Carlo experiment was performed with a single nominal simulation followed by many timing reevaluations