Design for Variability
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Contributor: Sudhakar Jilla, Director of Marketing, Place and Route Division, Mentor Graphics Corp. Format: PDF Document At nanometer technologies, variability is rapidly becoming one of the leading causes for chip failures and delayed schedules. However, there is significant confusion about the term "variability" in the design community today. "Variability" refers to the unpredictability, inconsistency, unevenness, and changeability associated with a given design feature. For nanometer design implementation flows, variability is associated with design modes, environmental conditions, manufacturing steps, and device and interconnect behavior. In this article, we explore different forms of variation, review the challenges involved in modeling variability and discuss the requirements of an implementation system that comprehensively analyzes and optimizes variability. |