Monitoring setup and hold timing limits
Résumé
For safety or AVS applications purpose, it is
important to validate and to monitor that the digital circuit is
never used outside its worst-case scenario for which it has been
designed. Indeed, as there are many sources of static and
dynamic variations (process, temperature, local mismatch,
aging…), timing closure is performed to fulfil the functionality
at best case and worst-case corners. In-Situ Monitor approach
are known to be good candidate to rise pre-error flag when
circuit operation point is very close to sign-off limits for setup
time violations. Here a new validation of this approach is
proposed for hold time violations. Implemented on an AES
circuit, different experimental characterizations are presented
and comparison with Timing Analysis and SPICE simulation
are given to illustrate the capability of the approach to detect
setup and hold time violation limits. Ageing of circuit exhibits
some variation in time of these limits. Finally, different use-case
that can affect the hold time violation are presented, and as
function of the activity scenario, the slack for the path is
discussed.