What's Holding Back Aging Simulation?

This time-saver still isn't a standard step in the verification of IC designs. Aging simulation supplies information about the long-term behavior before an IC enters into production, providing an important early evaluation of the reliability required by the application and specification. Re-designs due to reliability issues, and over-design with excessive safety margins, are avoided in this way. In addition, the long-term stability can be demonstrated to the customer. In particular, aging simulation takes into account the influence on integrated field effect transistors of the two degradation mechanisms of hot carrier injection (HCI) and bias temperature instability (BTI). Despite its usefulness, however, the comprehensive and customized simulation of aging is still relatively rare in practice.