A Supply Voltage-dependent Variation Aware Reliability Evaluation Model

Abstract

With the continuous scaling of CMOS VLSI technology well into the nano-meter regime, and the increasing demand for ultra low power/low voltage circuits and systems, reliability is becoming an extra design optimisation goal in addition to
size, performance, and energy. In this paper, a supply voltage Vdd-) dependent, transistor threshold voltage variation aware propagation delay estimation model and a comprehensive statistical model to evaluate the reliability of the VLSI
circuits is proposed. This accurate Vdd-dependent reliability evaluation model can be applied in the process of reliability driven multi-objective optimisation, which deals with tradeoffs between reliability, area, performance and energy. The
experimental results show that the average estimation error is within 3% when compared to Monte-Carlo SPICE simulation while saving runtime by at least 100 times for generic enchmark circuits.