All-Digital On-Chip Monitor for PMOS and NMOS Process Variability Utilizing Buffer Ring with Pulse Counter

Tetsuya IIZUKA  Jaehyun JEONG  Toru NAKURA  Makoto IKEDA  Kunihiro ASADA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics   Vol.E94-C   No.4   pp.487-494
Publication Date: 2011/04/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1353
DOI: 10.1587/transele.E94.C.487
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Circuits and Design Techniques for Advanced Large Scale Integration)
Category: 
Keyword: 
process variability,  all digital,  on-chip monitor,  buffer ring,  NBTI,  PBTI,  

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Summary: 
This paper proposes an all-digital process variability monitor which utilizes a simple buffer ring with a pulse counter. The proposed circuit monitors the process variability according to a count number of a single pulse which propagates on the buffer ring and a fixed logic level after the pulse vanishes. The proposed circuit has been fabricated in 65 nm CMOS process and the measurement results demonstrate that we can monitor the PMOS and NMOS variabilities independently using the proposed monitoring circuit. The proposed monitoring technique is suitable not only for the on-chip process variability monitoring but also for the in-field monitoring of aging effects such as negative/positive bias instability (NBTI/PBTI).