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Generative Process Variation Modeling and Analysis for Advanced Technology Based on Variational Autoencoder

delete2025-07-01
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PRE
AI
L
Liyuan Xue
A
Ankit Dixit
N
Naveen Kumar
V
Vihar Georgiev
DOI:10.1109/TED.2025.3570675delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
The development of advanced technology nodes highlights the significant impact of process variations on device electrical characteristics. To analyze and understand these variations, extensive and intensive technology computer-aided design (TCAD) simulations or costly on-wafer testing are often indispensable. This article proposes a novel generative process variation modeling method to alleviate this burden, which can learn from a few discrete sampling points and reproduce or generate analytical electrical responses for variation analysis and circuit simulation without requiring predefined domain knowledge or empirical equations. A silicon nanowire (NW) transistor is employed to showcase the strength of the proposed method, considering two complex process variabilities: metal grain granularity (MGG) and random discrete dopants (RDDs). The trained models on $\textit {I}_{\textit {d}}$ – $\textit {V}_{\textit {g}}$ curves achieve median percentage errors of 0.7% (best case) and 2.8% (worst case). Furthermore, the proposed framework is transfer-learnable, allowing data from a new variability source to be added to a trained model, resulting in even greater accuracy and further reducing the cost of data collection.
Keywords:
Device modeling
metal grain granularity (MGG)
nanowire (NW) transistor
process variation
random discrete dopants (RDDs)
variational autoencoder (VAE)

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices cover
IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices
IF:
3.2
Papers:
685
Citations:
3.7W

Organization

U
university of glasgow
Scholars:
3.5W
Papers: 3.1W
Citations: 37
S
shenzhen university
Scholars:
4.5W
Papers: 3.4W
Citations: 72