A Fast and Effective Sensitivity Calculation Method for Circuit Input Vectors

The sensitivity of circuit input vectors plays an important role in estimating circuit reliability bounds and identifying reliability-critical gates. Consequently, to effectively calculate the circuit sensitivity for the input vectors is becoming a necessity for nanocircuits, helping circuit designers to select the architecture that best optimizes the tradeoffs between reliability and area power delay. Combining probability signals and employing the iterative strategy presented in Monte Carlo method, this paper proposes an iterative algorithm based on a probabilistic transfer matrix to investigate the circuit sensitivity for the given input vectors, ensuring computational precision and speed. Simulation results on benchmark circuits show that the proposed algorithm is an efficient and accurate method to calculate the sensitivity of the applied input vectors, and that it can be used to improve circuit reliability at a small cost in the early stages of circuit design.