Highly accurate product-level aging monitoring in 40nm CMOS

A product-level aging monitor replicating a 40nm CMOS ARM1176 critical path is presented. The monitor enables a separation of the dominating negative bias instability (NBTI) stress, including speed recovery, and the switching-activity dependent hot carrier stress (HCS). The comprehensive analysis comprises transistor and circuit level measurements as well as simulations. The monitor results demonstrate that the overall circuit performance degradation, even at high frequencies and large switching activities, is 2% for wireless-typical operating conditions.