Flexible reliability assessment of digital circuits based on signal probability

In order to evaluate the reliability of VLSI, a level matrix for reliability and signal propagation evaluation is proposed based on the combination of probabilistic transfer matrix and signal probability reliability. By appropriate operations of the proposed matrix, reliability and signal probability of the entire circuit as well as the individual output(s) can be obtained flexibly. This new approach realizes hierarchical calculation by the proposed level matrix propagated from the previous state instead of the primary one. The efficiency and feasibility of the proposed method have been verified by both combinational and sequential benchmark circuits.