Hot-Carrier Reliability Enhancement via Input Reordering and Transistor Sizing

Hot-carrier eects and electromigration are the two important failure mechanisms that signicantly impact the long-term reliability of high-density VLSI ICs. In this paper, we present a probabilistic switchlevel method for identifying the most susceptible hotcarrier MOSFETs and improving their hot-carrier reliability using two techniques { (i) reordering of inputs to logic gates and (ii) selective MOSFET sizing. We also show that for a given circuit, the best design in terms of hot-carrier reliability does not necessarily coincide with the best design in terms of power consumption.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1996
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Aurobindo Dasgupta, Ramesh Karri
• Keywords: Computer Architecture, DAC 1996, Hot-carrier Reliability, Important Failure Mechanisms, Long-term Reliability