Statistical simulation is quickly replacing purely deterministic and corner-based approaches in characterizing the performance of circuits. Despite the rising need, current simulation tools and methodologies fall behind on providing adequate statistical functionality to evaluate designs under severe variability effects. We introduce a new framework built on top of SPICE and a GNU Matlab clone (Octave) that enable researchers to run extensive statistical simulations in a flexible yet fully-automated environment. The development of the tool will be discussed in terms of SPICE simulation technology and software engineering, followed by a demonstration of some interesting simulation results obtained using the tool.
published on: 26th January 2010