Stress Probability Computation for Estimating NBTI-Induced Delay Degradation
PMOS stress (ON) probability has a strong impact on circuit timing degradation due to NBTI effect. This paper evaluates how the granularity of stress probability calculation affects NBTI prediction using a state-of-the-art long term prediction model. Experimental evaluations show that the stress probability should be estimated at transistor level to accurately predict the increase in delay, especially when the circuit operation and/or inputs are highly biased. We then devise and evaluate two annotation methods of stress probability to gate-level timing analysis; one guarantees the pessimism desirable for timing analysis and the other aims to obtain the result close to transistor-level timing analysis. Experimental results show that gate-level timing analysis with transistor-level stress probability calculation estimates the increase in delay with 12.6% error.
stress probability nbti timing analysis