An efficient cubic spline approach to lifetime estimation [VSLI]

The problem of VLSI circuit lifetime estimation is discussed. It is shown that lifetime determination is equivalent to finding the smallest zero of a continuous nondifferentiable function for a specific circuit realization. An iterative multiple cubic spline approximation algorithm is proposed to determine the lifetime. The application to VLSI circuit analysis is described, in which the degradation resulting from the hot electron effects are considered. The results presented confirm the efficiency of the proposed approach