Statistical Methodology to Identify Optimal Placement of On-Chip Process Monitors for Predicting Fmax

Abstract

In previous literatures, many approaches use ring oscillators or other process monitors to correlate the chip\'s maximum operating frequency (F-max). But none of them focus on the placement of these on-chip process monitors (OPMs) on a chip. The placement will greatly influence the accuracy of a prediction model. In this paper, we first propose a simulation, framework to sample a chip\'s F-max and it\'s OPM result, These samples are used to develop our methodology of OPM placement and to verify the effectiveness of an OPM placement. Then, a model-fitting framework is presented to correlate the OPMs\' result to chip\'s F-max. Finally, we propose a methodology to idenify optimal placement of OPM for predicting F-max. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology in both simulation and silicon data.