This book is intended for readers who are interested in the design of robust and reliable electronic digital systems. The authors cover emerging trends in design of today’s reliable electronic systems which are applicable to safety-critical applications, such as automotive or healthcare electronic systems. The emphasis is on modeling approaches and algorithms for analysis and mitigation of soft errors in nano-scale CMOS digital circuits, using techniques that are the cornerstone of Computer Aided Design (CAD) of reliable VLSI circuits. The authors introduce software tools for analysis and mitigation of soft errors in electronic systems, which can be integrated easily with design flows. In addition to discussing soft error aware analysis techniques for combinational logic, the authors also describe new soft error mitigation strategies targeting commercial digital circuits. Coverage includes novel Soft Error Rate (SER) analysis techniques such as process variation aware SER estimation and GPU accelerated SER analysis techniques, in addition to SER reduction methods such as gate sizing and logic restructuring based SER techniques.

This edition provides an important contemporary view of a wide range of analog/digital circuit blocks, the BSIM model, data converter architectures, and more. The authors develop design techniques for both long- and short-channel CMOS technologies and then compare the two.

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 practical, tool-independent guide to designing digital circuits takes a unique, top-down approach, reflecting the nature of the design process in industry. Starting with architecture design, the book comprehensively explains the why and how of digital circuit design, using the physics designers need to know, and no more.

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.

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.

This book covers the state-of-the-art research in design of modern electronic systems used in safety-critical applications such as medical devices, aircraft flight control, and automotive systems. The authors discuss lifetime reliability of digital systems, as well as an overview of the latest research in the field of reliability-aware design of integrated circuits. They address modeling approaches and techniques for evaluation and improvement of lifetime reliability for nano-scale CMOS digital circuits, as well as design algorithms that are the cornerstone of Computer Aided Design (CAD) of reliable VLSI circuits. In addition to developing lifetime reliability analysis and techniques for clocked storage elements (such as flip-flops), the authors also describe analysis and improvement strategies targeting commercial digital circuits.