Integrated Characterization Circuit

摘要

In an embodiment, an integrated circuit includes a first circuit and a characterization circuit to capture a histogram of the supply voltage magnitude to the first circuit (or other characteristics of the first circuit). In various embodiments, the characterization circuit may: be located near the first circuit; include a sample/hold circuit that may sample the supply voltage in a short window of time and an ADC that is configured to converge to the sampled voltage over multiple orders of magnitude longer than the short window; be relatively small and low power; capture multiple histograms, e.g. one for each mode of the first circuit; support a blackout interval during mode changes; support a zoom feature to a subrange of supply voltage disabled with fine-grain histogram buckets; and/or include one or more comparators to detect maximum and/or minimum voltages experienced over a time interval.

主权项

1. An integrated circuit comprising:
a first circuit configured to provide the operational features of the integrated circuit; and a characterization circuit integrated into a semiconductor substrate of the integrated circuit with the first circuit and coupled to the first circuit, wherein the characterization circuit is configured to monitor at least one characteristic of the first circuit, the characterization circuit comprising:
a sample circuit configured to periodically sample the characteristic; anda histogram collection circuit configured to accumulate a histogram of the samples of the characteristic over a measurement interval, wherein a number of samples accumulated by the histogram collection circuit greater than or equal to a predetermined number represents a characteristic profile of the first supply voltage over the measurement interval.