Title
First-order incremental block-based statistical timing analysis
Abstract
Variability in digital integrated circuits makes timing verification an extremely challenging task. In this paper, a canonical first order delay model is proposed that takes into account both correlated and independent randomness. A novel linear-time block-based statistical timing algorithm is employed to propagate timing quantities like arrival times and required arrival times through the timing graph in this canonical form. At the end of the statistical timing, the sensitivities of all timing quantities to each of the sources of variation are available. Excessive sensitivities can then be targeted by manual or automatic optimization methods to improve the robustness of the design. This paper also reports the first incremental statistical timer in the literature which is suitable for use in the inner loop of physical synthesis or other optimization programs. The third novel contribution of this paper is the computation of local and global criticality probabilities. For a very small cost in CPU time, the probability of each edge or node of the timing graph being critical is computed. Numerical results are presented on industrial ASIC chips with over two million logic gates.
Year
DOI
Venue
2004
10.1109/TCAD.2005.862751
IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Timing,Probability,Application specific integrated circuits,Digital integrated circuits,Delay,Optimization methods,Robustness,Costs,Logic gates,Logic design
Inner loop,Algorithm design,Statistical static timing analysis,Computer science,CPU time,Canonical form,Robustness (computer science),Electronic engineering,Real-time computing,Static timing analysis,Timer
Conference
Volume
Issue
ISSN
25
10
0278-0070
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
1-58113-828-8
358
22.47
References 
Authors
10
5
Search Limit
100358
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
C. Visweswariah150758.12
K. Ravindran235822.47
K. Kalafala336022.82
S. G. Walker438928.55
S. Narayan535822.47