PARADE: parametric delay evaluation under process variation [IC modeling]

Under manufacturing process variation, the circuit delay varies with process parameters. For delay test and timing verification under process variation, it is necessary to model the variational delay as a function of process variables. However, conventional methods to generate such functions are either slow or inaccurate. In this paper, we present a number of new methods for fast parametric delay evaluation under process variation. Our methods are either based on explicit delay formulae or based on characterized lookup tables, and are significantly faster than conventional methods of comparable accuracy. Due to the efficiency of our method, we can accurately model any path delay as a function of multiple interconnect and device process variables in large circuits. Experimental results on ISCAS85 circuits show that the path delay error predicted by our methods is about 1% of that computed by the RSM using SPICE, where the path delay variation is within ±10%.