ENBIS: European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics

Efficient Simulation of Extremely Small Probabilities in SRAM Design

23 September 2008, 16:10 – 16:30

Abstract

Submitted by

Alessandro Di Bucchianico

Authors

A. Di Bucchianico T. Doorn J. ter Maten O. Wittich

Affiliation

Eindhoven University of Technology/ NXP Semiconductors Eindhoven

Abstract

Variability is an important aspect of SRAM memory cell design. Failure prob-abilities of Pfail≤10^-10 have to be estimated through statistical simulations using time consuming circuit simulators. Accurate statistical techniques such as Importance Sampling Monte Carlo simulations are essential to accurately esti-mate such extremely small failure probabilities. We show that a simple form of Importance Sampling is suffices for simulating Pfail≤10^-10 for important per-formance characteristics like the Static Noise Margin, Write Margin and Read Current. For the SNM, a new simple technique is proposed that allows extrapolating the SNM distribution based on a limited number of trials.

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