Patent ID: 8156460

Claim:
A method of estimating a leakage current in a semiconductor device, comprising: dividing a chip on a substrate into a plurality of segments, the chip including a plurality of cells on which various unit conductive structures of an integrated circuit are formed; determining spatial correlation between process parameters that are concerned with leakage currents in each of the cells; generating a virtual cell leakage characteristic function of a cell by using a computer to arithmetically operate actual leakage characteristic functions that determine the leakage currents generated from the cell, respectively, the virtual cell leakage characteristic function being equivalent to actual leakage characteristic functions, and a virtual leakage current generated by the virtual cell leakage characteristic function being equivalent with the leakage currents in the cell; generating a segment leakage characteristic function of a segment by arithmetically operating the virtual cell leakage characteristic functions of all cells in the segment, the segment leakage characteristic function determining a virtual leakage current generated from all of the cells in the segment; and generating a full chip leakage characteristic function of the chip by statistically operating the segment leakage characteristic functions of all segments in the chip, the full chip leakage characteristic function determining a virtual leakage current generated from the entirety of the chip of the semiconductor device.