Characterization of matching variability and low-frequency noise for mixed-signal technologies

A “device characterization view” on parametric and noise variability - summarized definitions, orders of magnitude and some rules of thumb - microscopic device architecture fluctuations (“matching”) are the dominant parametric spread contribution (<;100 nm nodes) - many other “systematic” variability effects affect devices by “a few percent” - blindly adding all possible effects explodes design margins, but with a bit of common sense a lot of the panic can be avoided - a lot of the effects are captured (largely) in compact models but beware of the near- and sub-threshold regions - noise variability and RTN are the new trending topics... - the variability buzz is certainly not over (the worst is yet to come).