Patent ID: 8037430
Filing Date: 2011-10-11
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method of determining an estimate of system-level yield loss for an electronic system comprising individual components, the method comprising: obtaining a description of the composition of the electronic system in terms of all individual components present in the electronic system; obtaining statistical properties of a performance of all individual components present in the electronic system with respect to a first and second performance variables, the first performance variable being different from the second performance variable, the statistical properties comprising correlation information of the first and second performance variables; obtaining information about execution of an application on the system; propagating the statistical properties of the first and second performance variables of the individual components present in the electronic system to the electronic system, so that correlations between the first and second performance variables are preserved, the propagating taking into account the information about execution of an application on the system; and determining the estimate of the system-level yield loss based on the propagated statistical properties of the first and second performance variables, wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices, wherein the statistical properties of the performance of individual components are probability density functions (PDFs), frequency distributions or binned histograms of random data, or any other form of statistical representation of the data, wherein propagating the statistical properties comprises manipulation of the probability density functions, wherein propagating the statistical properties comprises separately propagating the probability density functions for the first performance variable and for the second performance variable, wherein the method further comprising: projecting probability density functions on the first performance variable and second performance variable axes; and subsequently performing transformations related to the first and second performance variable metric.