Only two decades ago most electronic circuits were designed with a slide-rule, and the designs were verified using breadboard techniques. Simulation tools were a research curiosity and in general were mistrusted by most designers and test engineers. In those days the programs were not user friendly, models were inadequate, and the algorithms were not very robust. The demand for simulation tools has been driven by the increasing complexity of integrated circuits and systems, and it has been aided by the rapid decrease in the cost of com puting that has occurred over the past several decades. Today a wide range of tools exist for analYSiS, deSign, and verification, and expert systems and synthesis tools are rapidly emerging. In this book only one aspect of the analysis and design process is examined. but it is a very important aspect that has received much attention over the years. It is the problem of accurate circuit and timing simulation.

Digital Timing Macromodeling for VLSI Design Verification first of all provides an extensive history of the development of simulation techniques. It presents detailed discussion of the various techniques implemented in circuit, timing, fast-timing, switch-level timing, switch-level, and gate-level simulation. It also discusses mixed-mode simulation and interconnection analysis methods. The review in Chapter 2 gives an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of the many techniques applied in modern digital macromodels. The book also presents a wide variety of techniques for performing nonlinear macromodeling of digital MOS subcircuits which address a large number of shortcomings in existing digital MOS macromodels. Specifically, the techniques address the device model detail, transistor coupling capacitance, effective channel length modulation, series transistor reduction, effective transconductance, input terminal dependence, gate parasitic capacitance, the body effect, the impact of parasitic RC-interconnects, and the effect of transmission gates. The techniques address major sources of errors in existing macromodeling techniques, which must be addressed if macromodeling is to be accepted in commercial CAD tools by chip designers. The techniques presented in Chapters 4-6 can be implemented in other macromodels, and are demonstrated using the macromodel presented in Chapter 3. The new techniques are validated over an extremely wide range of operating conditions: much wider than has been presented for previous macromodels, thus demonstrating the wide range of applicability of these techniques.

As the complexity and the density of VLSI chips increase with shrinking design rules, the evaluation of long-term reliability of MOS VLSI circuits is becoming an important problem. The assessment and improvement of reliability on the circuit level should be based on both the failure mode analysis and the basic understanding of the physical failure mechanisms observed in integrated circuits. Hot-carrier induced degrada tion of MOS transistor characteristics is one of the primary mechanisms affecting the long-term reliability of MOS VLSI circuits. It is likely to become even more important in future generation chips, since the down ward scaling of transistor dimensions without proportional scaling of the operating voltage aggravates this problem. A thorough understanding of the physical mechanisms leading to hot-carrier related degradation of MOS transistors is a prerequisite for accurate circuit reliability evaluation. It is also being recognized that important reliability concerns other than the post-manufacture reliability qualification need to be addressed rigorously early in the design phase. The development and use of accurate reliability simulation tools are therefore crucial for early assessment and improvement of circuit reliability : Once the long-term reliability of the circuit is estimated through simulation, the results can be compared with predetermined reliability specifications or limits. If the predicted reliability does not satisfy the requirements, appropriate design modifications may be carried out to improve the resistance of the devices to degradation.

This useful book addresses electrothermal problems in modern VLSI systems. It discusses electrothermal phenomena and the fundamental building blocks that electrothermal simulation requires. The authors present three important applications of VLSI electrothermal analysis: temperature-dependent electromigration diagnosis, cell-level thermal placement, and temperature-driven power and timing analysis.

One service mathematics has rendered the 'Et moi ... si favait su comment en revenir, je n'y seTais point alle.' human race. It has put common sense back Jules Verne where it belongs. on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded n- sense', The series is divergent; therefore we may be Eric T. Bell able to do something with it. O. Heaviside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One scrvice logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendcred mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'e"tre of this scries.

This book proposes a new approach to circuit simulation that is still in its infancy. The reason for publishing this work as a monograph at this time is to quickly distribute these ideas to the research community for further study. The book is based on a doctoral dissertation undertaken at MIT between 1982 and 1985. In 1982 the author joined a research group that was applying bounding techniques to simple VLSI timing analysis models. The conviction that bounding analysis could also be successfully applied to sophisticated digital MOS circuit models led to the research presented here. Acknowledgments 'me author would like to acknowledge many helpful discussions and much support from his research group at MIT, including Lance Glasser, John Wyatt, Jr. , and Paul Penfield, Jr. Many others have also contributed to this work in some way, including Albert Ruchli, Mark Horowitz, Rich Zippel, Chtis Terman, Jacob White, Mark Matson, Bob Armstrong, Steve McCormick, Cyrus Bamji, John Wroclawski, Omar Wing, Gary Dare, Paul Bassett, and Rick LaMaire. The author would like to give special thanks to his wife, Deborra, for her support and many contributions to the presentation of this research. The author would also like to thank his parents for their encouragement, and IBM for its financial support of t,I-Jis project through a graduate fellowship. THE BOUNDING APPROACH TO VLSI CIRCUIT SIMULATION 1. INTRODUCTION The VLSI revolution of the 1970's has created a need for new circuit analysis techniques.

For the new millenium, Wai-Kai Chen introduced a monumental reference for the design, analysis, and prediction of VLSI circuits: The VLSI Handbook. Still a valuable tool for dealing with the most dynamic field in engineering, this second edition includes 13 sections comprising nearly 100 chapters focused on the key concepts, models, and equations. Written by a stellar international panel of expert contributors, this handbook is a reliable, comprehensive resource for real answers to practical problems. It emphasizes fundamental theory underlying professional applications and also reflects key areas of industrial and research focus. WHAT'S IN THE SECOND EDITION? Sections on... Low-power electronics and design VLSI signal processing Chapters on... CMOS fabrication Content-addressable memory Compound semiconductor RF circuits High-speed circuit design principles SiGe HBT technology Bipolar junction transistor amplifiers Performance modeling and analysis using SystemC Design languages, expanded from two chapters to twelve Testing of digital systems Structured for convenient navigation and loaded with practical solutions, The VLSI Handbook, Second Edition remains the first choice for answers to the problems and challenges faced daily in engineering practice.