Accurate age modeling, and fast, yet robust reliability sign-off emerged as mandatory constraints in Integrated Circuits (ICs) design for advanced process technology nodes. In this paper we introduce a novel method to assess and predict the circuit reliability at design time as well as at run-time. The main goal of our proposal is to allow for: (i) design time reliability optimization; (ii) fin...

Progress of integrated circuit technology allows integration of analog and digital circuits on the same chip. This co-integration yields higher performances and reliability, while reducing power consumption, but also raises new challenges for circuit designers. The substrate noise generated by the switching digital part has detrimental effects on the analog part. In this contribution, a wide-ba...

High performance computer systems, including those used for instrumentation, measurement, and advanced processing require high reliability, high quality complex integrated circuits (ICs) to ensure the accuracy of analytical data they process. Microprocessors and other complex ICs (i.e. GPGPU) are predominantly considered the important components within these systems. They are susceptible to ele...

Reducing the size of a logic circuit through lattice identities is an important and well-studied discrete optimization problem. In this paper, we consider a related problem of integrating several circuits into a single hypercircuit using the recently-developed concept of lattice hyperterms. We give a combinatorial algorithm for integrating k-out-of-n symmetrical diagrams which play important ro...

It is widely known and understood that the overall cost and quality of a product is most influenced by decisions made early in the design stage. Finding and correcting design flaws later in the product development cycle is extremely costly. The worst case situation is discovering design problems after failures occur in the field. Designing for reliability has been “easier said than done” due in...

This paper describes the challenges faced in predicting the reliability of very large scale integration (VLSI) circuits. Currently, lots of trial-and-errors are still needed for the parameters selected to develop a neural network prediction model, whose result is with a great deal of uncertainty. The objective of this paper is to provide a novel and practical approach to design a reliability pr...

Electromigration due to insufficient wire width can cause the premature failure of a circuit. The ongoing reduction of circuit feature sizes has aggravated the problem over the last couple of years, especially with analog circuits. It is therefore an important reliability issue to consider current densities already in the physical design stage. We present a new methodology capable of routing an...

this brief introduces a method of improving the power conversion efficiency of a dc-dc boost converter with passive snubber circuit. This method uses a passive snubber circuit which consists of two inductors, a capacitor, and a diode, to reduce switching loss. The use of passive soft switching methods has been emphasized as better alternative to active methods mainly because they do not require...