A Cross-Layer Approach to Measure the Robustness of Integrated Circuits

Abstract

The demands on system robustness and its immunity against perturbations are getting increasingly important. Nearly everybody has an intuitive understanding of what robustness means, but there is no proper way how to measure robustness of integrated circuits already during the design phase. Therefore, a general cross-layer robustness model and methods to quantitatively measure robustness are presented. Moreover, these methods are refined to predict the robustness against degradation of digital circuits due to aging effects.