A Computer Application to Reliable Circuit Design

The problem of reliable electronic circuit design by statistical methods is described. After a brief account of the history of this problem, we give the principle of one successful method-Monte Carlo. Two implementations of this method, as digital-computer programs, are given. The first program analyzes the reliability of a given circuit. The second program picks component values to optimize the circuit behavior with respect to several performance aspects. Examples illustrating the nature of the input and output information are included. ``... Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them ....'' -A. N. Whitehead