Using Presilicon Knowledge to Excite Nonlinear Failure Modes in Large Mixed-Signal Circuits

摘要

With the continuous growing of analog circuit complexity, identifying critical failure modes is of great importance today. This article develops an information-theoretic framework to rank important parameters based on presilicon data. The proposed framework is further used to design the optimal test set that maximizes the probability of observing out-of-specification failures. A phase-locked loop example is adopted to validate the proposed framework.