The DECO framework: Reliability simulation based on a general design environment communication approach

Integrated circuit reliability is a major quality criterion in the semiconductor industry. Different physical mechanisms lead to transistor ageing, which depends on voltage conditions and temperature, and result in wear-out induced performance loss. To guarantee specified product life times already during the design phase, the impact of degradation needs to be analyzed in reliability simulations. First commercial tools carry out particular tasks in this subject, but they are not flexible. This paper presents our approach for an integrated reliability simulation framework. It combines ageing simulations and self-heating analyses and can easily be extended to cover further reliability concerns. Particular attention is paid to the communication between our tools and the design-environment. For this purpose, our XML-based DECO framework offers a flexible and easy-to-extend data transfer.