Comparison of characterization methods for statistical analysis of SoC designs

This paper compares characteristics and performances of characterization methods for statistical timing analysis and statistical leakage estimation. Two popular characterization methods, regular grid sampling and distribution based sampling are selected and their features, advantages and disadvantages are discussed. The experimental results performed with ISCAS benchmark circuits showed the accuracy of using two methods in statistical analysis. In statistical timing analysis, distribution based sampling, which is good approach when the variation is not large, shows good performance in terms of accuracy. However, in statistical leakage estimation, regular grid sampling, which is superior when the variation is very large, shows good performance.