Keeping Your Circuit in Tune: Sensitivity Analysis and Circuit Optimization

Anyone who has ever played a musical instrument knows how hard it can be to keep the instrument in tune when subjected to variations in weather conditions.

Heck, in 2009, Yo-Yo Ma and friends (sorry, he gets top billing because I used to play the cello) pantomimed their performance at the Presidential Inauguration because their instruments wouldn’t function properly in the frigid temperatures.

Guess they didn’t want to risk sounding like my seventh-grade orchestra in front of that large an audience.

What’s the Worst that Could Happen?: Worst-Case Corners in ADE GXL

In addition to combinations of temperature range and power supply voltages (usually more than one), the process design kit which landed on your desk yesterday presented a bewildering alphabet soup of device corner combinations which you need to consider when verifying your circuit design.