21 research outputs found
Stochastic Testing Simulator for Integrated Circuits and MEMS: Hierarchical and Sparse Techniques
Process variations are a major concern in today's chip design since they can
significantly degrade chip performance. To predict such degradation, existing
circuit and MEMS simulators rely on Monte Carlo algorithms, which are typically
too slow. Therefore, novel fast stochastic simulators are highly desired. This
paper first reviews our recently developed stochastic testing simulator that
can achieve speedup factors of hundreds to thousands over Monte Carlo. Then, we
develop a fast hierarchical stochastic spectral simulator to simulate a complex
circuit or system consisting of several blocks. We further present a fast
simulation approach based on anchored ANOVA (analysis of variance) for some
design problems with many process variations. This approach can reduce the
simulation cost and can identify which variation sources have strong impacts on
the circuit's performance. The simulation results of some circuit and MEMS
examples are reported to show the effectiveness of our simulatorComment: Accepted to IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference in June 2014.
arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1407.302
Uncertainty quantification for integrated circuits: Stochastic spectral methods
Due to significant manufacturing process variations, the performance of integrated circuits (ICs) has become increasingly uncertain. Such uncertainties must be carefully quantified with efficient stochastic circuit simulators. This paper discusses the recent advances of stochastic spectral circuit simulators based on generalized polynomial chaos (gPC). Such techniques can handle both Gaussian and non-Gaussian random parameters, showing remarkable speedup over Monte Carlo for circuits with a small or medium number of parameters. We focus on the recently
developed stochastic testing and the application of conventional
stochastic Galerkin and stochastic collocation schemes to nonlinear
circuit problems. The uncertainty quantification algorithms for static, transient and periodic steady-state simulations are presented along with some practical simulation results. Some open problems in this field are discussed.MIT Masdar Program (196F/002/707/102f/70/9374
Enabling High-Dimensional Hierarchical Uncertainty Quantification by ANOVA and Tensor-Train Decomposition
Hierarchical uncertainty quantification can reduce the computational cost of
stochastic circuit simulation by employing spectral methods at different
levels. This paper presents an efficient framework to simulate hierarchically
some challenging stochastic circuits/systems that include high-dimensional
subsystems. Due to the high parameter dimensionality, it is challenging to both
extract surrogate models at the low level of the design hierarchy and to handle
them in the high-level simulation. In this paper, we develop an efficient
ANOVA-based stochastic circuit/MEMS simulator to extract efficiently the
surrogate models at the low level. In order to avoid the curse of
dimensionality, we employ tensor-train decomposition at the high level to
construct the basis functions and Gauss quadrature points. As a demonstration,
we verify our algorithm on a stochastic oscillator with four MEMS capacitors
and 184 random parameters. This challenging example is simulated efficiently by
our simulator at the cost of only 10 minutes in MATLAB on a regular personal
computer.Comment: 14 pages (IEEE double column), 11 figure, accepted by IEEE Trans CAD
of Integrated Circuits and System
Efficient Uncertainty Quantification for the Periodic Steady State of Forced and Autonomous Circuits
This brief proposes an uncertainty quantification method for the periodic steady-state (PSS) analysis with both Gaussian and non-Gaussian variations. Our stochastic testing formulation for the PSS problem provides superior efficiency over both Monte Carlo methods and existing spectral methods. The numerical implementation of a stochastic shooting Newton solver is presented for both forced and autonomous circuits. Simulation results on some analog/RF circuits are reported to show the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms
Review of polynomial chaos-based methods for uncertainty quantification in modern integrated circuits
Advances in manufacturing process technology are key ensembles for the production of integrated circuits in the sub-micrometer region. It is of paramount importance to assess the effects of tolerances in the manufacturing process on the performance of modern integrated circuits. The polynomial chaos expansion has emerged as a suitable alternative to standardMonte Carlo-based methods that are accurate, but computationally cumbersome. This paper provides an overview of the most recent developments and challenges in the application of polynomial chaos-based techniques for uncertainty quantification in integrated circuits, with particular focus on high-dimensional problems