Physical timing modeling for bipolar VLSI

An approach for the analytical timing modeling of bipolar VLSI circuits that is based on average branch current analysis and the parametric correction scheme is presented. The combination of these techniques permits complex delay-sensitive effects of bipolar digital circuits to be incorporated in the derivation of the bipolar delay models. The delay functions of two basic bipolar subcircuit configurations (the series-gated structure and the emitter follower) are derived using the proposed techniques. It is shown that accurate timing information for the high-speed bipolar digital circuit, such as ECL, CML, and BiCMOS, can be obtained by repeated processing of these subcircuit delay functions. The delay estimates obtained with these timing models have been shown to be accurate typically within 10% of SPICE estimates. Applications include switch-level timing simulation, timing analysis and verification cell optimization, and technology mapping. >