Patent ID: 7567891

Claim:
A method of simulating degradation of a circuit, said method comprising: causing transmission of a program of instructions executable by a computer to a user's computer, thereby enabling the user's computer to perform, by means of such program, the process of: stressing a device for a time period; measuring values for a plurality of device parameters of the stressed device during the time period; selecting one of the device parameters; extracting a relation between stress time and a degradation of the selected parameter from the measured values for the selected parameter during the time period; extracting a degradation rate for the device from the relation between stress time and the degradation of the selected parameter; deriving from the degradation rate a device degradation model for a device parameter other than the selected device parameter; and prior to extracting a relation between stress time and the degradation of the selected parameter, selecting a functional form for the relation, wherein said functional form is that a logarithm of the degradation is proportional to the stress time to a power; and executing the program of instructions on the user's computer, thereby to simulate the degradation of the circuit.