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A linear-time approach for static timing analysis covering all process corners

Published: 05 November 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Manufacturing process variations lead to circuit timing variability and a corresponding timing yield loss. Traditional corner analysis consists of checking all process corners (combinations of process parameter extremes) to make sure that circuit timing constraints are met at all corners, typically by running static timing analysis (STA) at every corner. This approach is becoming too expensive due to the exponential increase in the number of corners with modern processes. As an alternative, we propose a linear-time approach for STA which covers all process corners in a single pass. Our technique assumes a linear dependence of delay on process parameters and provides tight bounds on the worst-case circuit delay. It exhibits high accuracy (within 1-3%) in practice and, if the circuit has m gates and n relevant process parameters, the complexity of the algorithm is O(mn).

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Cited By

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  • (2009)Quantifying robustness metrics in parameterized static timing analysisProceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Computer-Aided Design10.1145/1687399.1687438(209-216)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2009
  • (2008)Efficient block-based parameterized timing analysis covering all potentially critical pathsProceedings of the 2008 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design10.5555/1509456.1509504(173-180)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2008
  • (2008)Variability and Statistical DesignIPSJ Transactions on System LSI Design Methodology10.2197/ipsjtsldm.1.181(18-32)Online publication date: 2008
  • Show More Cited By

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  1. A linear-time approach for static timing analysis covering all process corners

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        ICCAD '06: Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/ACM international conference on Computer-aided design
        November 2006
        147 pages
        ISBN:1595933891
        DOI:10.1145/1233501
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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        Published: 05 November 2006

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        View all
        • (2009)Quantifying robustness metrics in parameterized static timing analysisProceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Computer-Aided Design10.1145/1687399.1687438(209-216)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2009
        • (2008)Efficient block-based parameterized timing analysis covering all potentially critical pathsProceedings of the 2008 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design10.5555/1509456.1509504(173-180)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2008
        • (2008)Variability and Statistical DesignIPSJ Transactions on System LSI Design Methodology10.2197/ipsjtsldm.1.181(18-32)Online publication date: 2008
        • (2008)A framework for block-based timing sensitivity analysisProceedings of the 45th annual Design Automation Conference10.1145/1391469.1391647(688-693)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2008
        • (2008)Parameterized timing analysis with general delay models and arbitrary variation sourcesProceedings of the 45th annual Design Automation Conference10.1145/1391469.1391576(403-408)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2008
        • (2007)Efficient computation of the worst-delay cornerProceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe10.5555/1266366.1266721(1617-1622)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2007

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