The impact of intra-die device parameter variations on path delays and on the design for yield of low voltage digital circuits

The yield of low voltage digital circuits is found to he sensitive to local gate delay variations due to uncorrelated intra-die parameter deviations. Caused by statistical deviations of the doping concentration they lead to more pronounced delay variations for minimum transistor sizes. Their influen...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:IEEE transactions on very large scale integration (VLSI) systems 1997-12, Vol.5 (4), p.360-368
Hauptverfasser: Eisele, M., Berthold, J., Schmitt-Landsiedel, D., Mahnkopf, R.
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext bestellen
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:The yield of low voltage digital circuits is found to he sensitive to local gate delay variations due to uncorrelated intra-die parameter deviations. Caused by statistical deviations of the doping concentration they lead to more pronounced delay variations for minimum transistor sizes. Their influence on path delays in digital circuits is verified using a carry select adder test circuit fabricated in 0.5 and 0.35 /spl mu/m complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technologies with two different threshold voltages. The increase of the path delay variations for smaller device dimensions and reduced supply voltages as well as the dependence on the path length is shown. It is found that circuits with a large number of critical paths and with a low logic depth are most sensitive to uncorrelated gate delay variations. Scenarios for future technologies show the increased impact of uncorrelated delay variations on digital design. A reduction of the maximal clock frequency of 10% is found for, for example, highly pipelined systems realized in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS technology.
ISSN:1063-8210
1557-9999
DOI:10.1109/92.645062