A method of determining the performance of a chip of an integrated-circuit design comprises instantiating a plurality of HPM in the integrated-circuit design to generate the performance of the chip according to a performance function defined by a polynomial comprising a plurality of terms, wherein each term of the polynomial comprises an exponent of a value generated by a corresponding one of the plurality of HPM(s) and a corresponding coefficient, wherein the coefficients are determined through a regression process with sample chips of the integrated-circuit design having known performance, so that the performance of each chip other than the sample chips can be determined by the performance function and the values of the plurality of HPM(s) of the chip.