Static statistical timing analysis for latch-based pipeline designs

A latch-based timing analyzer is an essential tool for developing high-speed pipeline designs. As process variations increasingly influence the timing characteristics of DSM designs, a timing analyzer capable of handling process-induced timing variations for latchbased pipeline designs becomes in demand. In this work, we present a static statistical timing analyzer, STAP, for latch-based pipeline designs. Our analyzer propagates statistical worst-case delays as well as critical probabilities across the pipeline stages. We present an efficient method to handle correlations due to reconvergent fanouts. We also demonstrate the impact of not including the analysis of reconvergent fanouts in latch-based pipeline designs. Comparing to a Monte-Carlo based timing analyzer, our experiments show that STAP can accurately evaluate the critical probability that a design violates the timing constraints under a given statistical timing model. The runtime comparison further demonstrates the effici...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: ICCAD
• Authors: Rob A. Rutenbar, Li-C. Wang, Kwang-Ting Cheng, Sandip Kundu
• Keywords: Hardware, ICCAD 2004, Latch-based Timing Analyzer, Statistical Timing Analyzer, Statistical Timing Model