An iterative approach to VLSI circuit lifetime estimation
Abstract In this paper, the problem of VLSI circuit lifetime estimation is discussed. It is shown that lifetime determination is equivalent to finding the smallest zero of a continuous non-differentiable function for a specific circuit realization. An iterative multiple cubic spline approximation algorithm is proposed to determine the lifetime. Application in VLSI circuit analysis is given, in which the degradation resulting from the hot electron effects are considered. The results show that our proposed approach is efficient.