On-chip ESD (electrostatic discharging) protection is a challenging IC design problem. New CAD tools are essential to ESD protection design prediction and verification at full chip level. This paper reports a smart parametric checking mechanism and the first intelligent CAD tool, entitled ESDInspector, developed for full-chip ESD protection circuitry design verification. Capability of the new tool is demonstrated using a practical design example in a 0.35μm BiCMOS.
Published in:
Circuits and Systems, 2004. ISCAS '04. Proceedings of the 2004 International Symposium on
(Volume:5
)
Date of Conference: 23-26 May 2004