Temperature dependent timing in standard cell designs

This paper proposes a methodology to simulate temperature dependent timing in standard cell designs. Temperature dependent timing characteristics are derived from standard delay format (SDF) files that are created by synthesis tools automatically. A case study is also presented in this paper where the temperature dependent frequency variation of a ring oscillator is simulated demonstrating the necessity of temperature dependent timing simulations. An adaptively refineable partitioning method for simulating standard cell designs logi-thermally is proposed as well. This paper also introduces recent enhancements in the CellTherm logi-thermal simulator developed in the Department of Electron Devices, BME, Hungary.