Abstract—This paper presents a novel procedure for predicting integrated circuit parametric performance and yield when provided with sample transistor test results and a circuit schematic. Two enhancements to the existing Monte Carlo simulation procedures are described: 1) a multivariate nested model is used to reproduce random process-induced device variations, rather than the multivariate multinormal model typically used, and 2) the stochastic Monte Carlo method for mapping process variability into a performance distribution is replaced with a deterministic mapping technique. The use of multivariate nested distributions allows estimation not only of correlation between various model parameters, but also allows each of those variations to be apportioned among the various stages of the process (i.e., wafer to wafer, lot to lot, etc.). This allows matched devices to be more accurately simulated, without having to develop customized models for each configuration of matching, and provides focus for process improvement efforts into those areas with the maximum potential reward. The use of deterministic mapping provides simulation results which are repeatable and do not rely on chance to insure that the process parameter space has been evenly explored. A software package which implements the entire procedure has been written in C++. Index Terms—Monte Carlo simulation, multivariate statistics, parametric yield.

As VLSI technology moves to the nanometer scale for transistor feature sizes, the impact of manufacturing imperfections result in large variations in the circuit performance. Traditional CAD tools are not well-equipped to handle this scenario, since they do not model this statistical nature of the circuit parameters and performances, or if they do, the existing techniques tend to be over-simplified or intractably slow. We draw upon ideas for attacking parallel problems in other technical fields, such as computational finance, machine learning and hydrology, and synthesize them with innovative attacks for our problem domain of integrated circuits, to develop novel solutions to problems of efficient statistical analysis of circuits in the nanometer regime. In particular, this thesis makes three contributions: 1) SiLVR, a nonlinear response surface modeling (RSM) and performance-driven dimensionality reduction strategy, that uses the concepts of projection pursuit and latent variable regression to obtain an absolute improvement in modeling error of up to 34% over the best quadratic RSM method. SiLVR also captures the designer’s insight into the circuit behavior, by automatically extracting quantitative measures of relative