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Circuit Reliability Simulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2011

Chenming Hu
Chenming Hu*
Affiliation:
University of California Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 231 Cory Hall, #1770, Berkeley, CA 94720-1770
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Abstract

In designing a complex circuit, designers make a large number of circuit simulations, design changes and optimizations and can predict the circuit's performance reasonably accurately before committing it to silicon. It would be unthinkable to bypass detailed circuit simulation and optimization and rely on simple design rules and the testing of finished IC's to discover errors or to find out if the performance of the circuit meet specifications. Yet, this is basically the way IC reliability is treated today. A logical alternative is to predict circuit reliability at the circuit design stage through reliability simulation.

Reliability simulator BERT is used to illustrate the physical models and approaches used to simulate the hot electron effect, oxide time-dependent breakdown, electromigration, bipolar transistor gain degradation, and radiation effects. The goal is to make circuit reliability simulation a part of the IC design process.

Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 391: Symposium T – Materials Reliability in Microelectronics V , 1995 , 3
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1995

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