Compact MOSFET Modeling for Process Variability-Aware VLSI Circuit Design

This paper presents a systematic methodology to develop compact MOSFET models for process variability-aware VLSI circuit design. Process variability in scaled CMOS technologies severely impacts the functionality, yield, and reliability of advanced integrated circuit devices, circuits, and systems. Therefore, variability-aware circuit design techniques are required for realistic assessment of the impact of random and systematic process variability in advanced VLSI circuit performance. However, variability-aware circuit design requires compact MOSFET variability models for computer analysis of the impact of process variability in VLSI circuit design. This paper describes a generalized methodology to determine the major set of device parameters sensitive to random and systematic process variability in nanoscale MOSFET devices, map each variability-sensitive device parameter to the corresponding compact model parameter of the target compact model, and generate statistical compact MOSFET models for variability-aware VLSI circuit design.