Scalable Methods for the Analysis and Optimization of Gate Oxide Breakdown

Jianxin Fang and Sachin Sapatnekar
Department of ECE, University of Minnesota


Abstract

In this paper we first develop an analytic closed-form model for the failure probability (FP) of a large digital circuit due to gate oxide breakdown. Our approach accounts for the fact that not every breakdown leads to circuit failure, and shows a 6-11x relaxation of the predicted lifetime with respect to the ultra-pessimistic area-scaling method. Next, we develop a posynomial-based optimization approach to perform gate sizing for oxide reliability in addition to timing and area.