Conditional autoregressive Transformer for NBTI aging trajectory prediction

Qin Haobin, Wang Zherui, Shan Shushan, Fang Liquan, Zheng Feijun

Integrated Circuits and Embedded Systems ›› 2026, Vol. 26 ›› Issue (11) : 14-25.

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Integrated Circuits and Embedded Systems ›› 2026, Vol. 26 ›› Issue (11) : 14-25. DOI: 10.20193/j.ices2097-4191.2026.0082
Special Issue on HIPI ICTS 2026 Integrated Circuits Test Symposium

Conditional autoregressive Transformer for NBTI aging trajectory prediction

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Abstract

As CMOS technology nodes continue to scale down, aging effects such as Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) have become increasingly significant and have emerged as critical factors affecting circuit reliability. Accurate prediction of the aging-induced performance degradation in integrated circuits can mitigate the risk of in-field failures. A promising prediction paradigm involves the continuous collection of chip operating conditions, including supply voltage, temperature, signal duty cycle, and partial performance-degradation information, and constructing a machine-learning model that uses past degradation observations to forecast future degradation trends. Such a capability aligns closely with the objectives of Silicon Lifecycle Management (SLM), which seeks to monitor, analyze, and optimize chip performance throughout its operational lifetime. In this paper, we propose the Conditional Autoregressive Transformer (CAT), a decoder-only sequential prediction model that, conditioned on chip operating conditions and historical degradation traces, predicts the degradation trajectory over a future time horizon. CAT leverages causal attention mechanisms to capture the temporal dependencies inherent in NBTI aging dynamics, enabling multi-step extrapolation from partial sensor data. Experimental results demonstrate that CAT achieves accurate degradation forecasting, offering a practical solution for SLM-driven reliability management in advanced CMOS technologies.

Key words

NBTI / circuit reliability / aging trajectory prediction / Silicon Lifecycle Management (SLM) / sequential prediction / decoder-only Transformer

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Qin Haobin , Wang Zherui , Shan Shushan , et al . Conditional autoregressive Transformer for NBTI aging trajectory prediction[J]. Integrated Circuits and Embedded Systems. 2026, 26(11): 14-25 https://doi.org/10.20193/j.ices2097-4191.2026.0082

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