Test generation based diagnosis of device parameters for analog circuits

With the increasing complexity of manufacturing processes and the shrinking of device geometries, the performance metrics of integrated circuits (ICs) are becoming increasingly sensitive to random fluctuations in the manufacturing process. We propose a diagnosis methodology that can be used to infer the cause(s) of variations in performance of analog ICs. The methodology consists of (a) a device parameter computation technique which is used to compute the device parameters of an IC from measurements made on it and (b) a cause-effect analysis module that is used to compute the cause of the variation in performance metrics of a given set of ICs. Simulation results to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique are presented