Design-adaptive device modeling in model compiler for efficient and accurate circuit simulation

Abstract

A new concept of design-adaptive device modeling is introduced and an innovative method using adaptive device models to speed up circuit simulation is presented. In this method, we utilize the design specific information to generate automatically adaptive device models, which implies partial information on the more generic device model. During simulation, available adaptive device models are substituted automatically for more computationally expensive general device models. The proposed method is model compiler based and has been implemented in our compact device model compiler - MCAST, and targeted and tested for three simulators: the open source circuit simulator SPICE3, Cadence's SPECTREv4.46 and an industry in-house simulator. Experimental results show that the model evaluation time of a typical design adaptive device model is up to 10/spl times/ faster compared to manually coded built-in general device model, and the overall simulation time with design-adaptive device models can be up to 8/spl times/ faster with respect to simulation with general device models while achieving the same accuracy.