Virtuosity: Reliability Analysis Report-Reliable Results Made Interactive

9 Jun 2022 • 5 minute read

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With the advent of the ever-increasing use of ICs in mission-critical applications, such as industrial, medical, aerospace, and automotive, the need for reliable reliability analysis has become of paramount importance. Over the years, you have been using reliability analysis in Virtuoso ADE Assembler and Virtuoso ADE Explorer to measure and review aging effects, such as device characteristic degradations, model parameter changes, self-heating effects, and so on. Reviewing degradation reports in text or XML formats can be a tiresome exercise because degradation data can be large (>100MB) and can contain a large number of instances (>100K) due to advanced technology nodes and post-layout simulations.

For you to work effectively and interactively with these reports, it was now time to take a quantum leap forward with enhancements in performance, capabilities, and the overall results-viewing experience. Therefore, we have introduced an all-new Reliability Report view during the IC6.1.8 and ICADVM20.1 ISR21 releases. The new reliability report is based on the SQLite database that adds the benefit of improved performance and capabilities of sorting and filtering reliability data using SQLite operators.

Read through this blog to learn about all that you can do with the new Reliability Report view in Virtuoso ADE Assembler and Virtuoso ADE Explorer.

The Reliability Report view is supported only for Spectre version 20.1 ISR10 or later. This feature is not supported for third-party simulators, RelXpert mode, and Reliability Analysis in Monte Carlo run mode.

Reliability Report View

You can switch to the Reliability Report view using either of the following ways. On the Results tab:

Select Reliability Report from the Select the results view drop-down list.
Right-click an output value for a stress result and then select Reliability Data – Switch to Reliability Report.

Reliability Analysis Results has a new Reliability Report view

Consolidated Reports at a Single Place

The Reliability Report view displays consolidated degradation reports across all reliability setups, corners, and design points in a common GUI. In the top-left corner of the Reliability Report view, you find the Reliability Setup drop-down list that lets you select All or the reliability setup of your interest for which you want to view the results.

Customized Display

You can customize the display of the Reliability Report view the way you need. For example, you can hide the columns you want and also change the order in which these columns are displayed. To do so:

Right-click a column that you want to hide and choose Hide Column.
To show all hidden columns, right-click any column and choose Show All Columns.
To change the order of a column, select the column and drag it to a location either to the left or to the right where you want to move it.

Column Filters

You can use the Filter fields below the column headers to filter and selectively view results of your interest. For example, if you want to filter results to view only devices whose electrical characteristics have degraded by more than 10% after more than 8 years, type >0.10 and >8 in the Filter fields below the Degrad and Ltime columns in the Device Lifetime and Degradation report. When you click enter, the results are filtered in the reliability report. You can also save these column filters in just two steps:

In the Select a Reliability Data Filter drop-down combo box, type a name for the column filter.
Right-click anywhere in the combo box and click Save.

Use Filters to filter Reliability Analysis results in the new Reliability Report view

Custom Reliability Data Filter

You can create your own custom reliability data filters with different filter criteria. You can save these custom filters and reuse them for the same or different reliability analysis reports and reliability setups. You can define a custom filter by using the Customize Reliability Data Filters form with the help of SQLite operators and statements. An example of such custom reliability data filter is shown below:

Use Custom Reliability Data Filter to filter device characteristic, device degradation, and self-heating results using SQLite operators

When you apply this custom filter, results are filtered according to the specified criteria.

Reliability Filter

Related Resources

Product Manuals	Virtuoso ADE Assembler User Guide Virtuoso ADE SKILL Reference Viewing Reliability Report
Videos	Reusing a Stress File in a Reliability Setup Using the calcValForRel Function in Reliability Analysis What's New in Reliability Setup Using the calcVal SKILL Function in a Design Variable in the ADE Assembler
Rapid Adoption Kits	IC6.1.8: Reliability Analysis
Blogs	Virtuoso Video Diary: What's New in Reliability Setup Virtuoso Video Diary: Enhancements in Reliability Analysis

For more information on Cadence circuit design products and services, visit www.cadence.com.

Contact Us

For any questions, general feedback, or even if you want to suggest a future blog topic, write to custom_ic_blogs@cadence.com.

Happy reading!

Udit Rajput

About Virtuosity

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