Circuit Pitfalls

• Circuit designers use simple circuits due to their robustness.
• Larger circuits with more transistors add more area & capacitance and has more possibility of error.
• Static CMOS is the most robust family.

Certain circuit pitfalls that can cause chips to fail include

Threshold drop

Leakage

Charge sharing

Power supply noise

Hot spots

Minority carrier injection

Back gate coupling

Process sensitivity

Soft errors