Defect-sensitivity analysis of an SEU immune CMOS logic family

Fault testing of resistive manufacturing defects is done on a recently developed single event upset immune logic family. Resistive ranges and delay times are compared with those of traditional CMOS logic. Reaction of the logic to these defects is observed for a NOR gate, and an evaluation of its ability to cope with them is determined

Fault simulation for structural testing of analogue integrated circuits

In this thesis the ANTICS analogue fault simulation software is described which provides a statistical approach to fault simulation for accurate analogue IC test evaluation. The traditional figure of fault coverage is replaced by the average probability of fault detection. This is later refined by considering the probability of fault occurrence to generate a more realistic, weighted test metric. Two techniques to reduce the fault simulation time are described, both of which show large reductions in simulation time with little loss of accuracy. The final section of the thesis presents an accurate comparison of three test techniques and an evaluation of dynamic supply current monitoring. An increase in fault detection for dynamic supply current monitoring is obtained by removing the DC component of the supply current prior to measurement

Fault modeling, delay evaluation and path selection for delay test under process variation in nano-scale VLSI circuits

Delay test in nano-scale VLSI circuits becomes more difficult with shrinking technology feature sizes and rising clock frequencies. In this dissertation, we study three challenging issues in delay test: fault modeling, variational delay evaluation and path selection under process variation. Previous research of fault modeling on resistive spot defects, such as resistive opens and bridges in the interconnect, and resistive shorts in devices, lacked an accurate fault model. As a result it was difficult to perform fault simulation and select the best vectors. Conventional methods to compute variational delay under process variation are either slow or inaccurate. On the problem of path selection under process variation, previous approaches either choose too many paths, or missed the path that is necessary to be tested. We present new solutions in this dissertation. A new fault model that clearly and comprehensively expresses the relationship between electrical behaviors and resistive spots is proposed. Then the effect of process variations on path delays is modeled with a linear function and a fast method to compute coefficients of the linear function is also derived. Finally, we present the new path pruning algorithms that efficiently prune unimportant paths for test, and as a result we select as few as possible paths for test while the fault coverage is satisfied. The experimental results show that the new solutions are efficient and accurate

Fault modelling and accelerated simulation of integrated circuits manufacturing defects under process variation

As silicon manufacturing process scales to and beyond the 65-nm node, process variation can no longer be ignored. The impact of process variation on integrated circuit performance and power has received significant research input. Variation-aware test, on the other hand, is a relatively new research area that is currently receiving attention worldwide.Research has shown that test without considering process variation may lead to loss of test quality. Fault modelling and simulation serve as a backbone of manufacturing test. This thesis is concerned with developing efficient fault modelling techniques and simulation methodologies that take into account the effect of process variation on manufacturing defects with particular emphasis on resistive bridges and resistive opens.The first contribution of this thesis addresses the problem of long computation time required to generate logic fault of resistive bridges under process variation by developing a fast and accurate modelling technique to model logic fault behaviour of resistive bridges.The new technique is implemented by employing two efficient voltage calculation algorithms to calculate the logic threshold voltage of driven gates and critical resistance of a fault-site to enable the computation of bridge logic faults without using SPICE. Simulation results show that the technique is fast (on average 53 times faster) and accurate (worst case is 2.64% error) when compared with HSPICE. The second contribution analyses the complexity of delay fault simulation of resistive bridges to reduce the computation time of delay fault when considering process variation. An accelerated delay fault simulation methodology of resistive bridges is developed by employing a three-step strategy to speed up the calculation of transient gate output voltage which is needed to accurately compute delay faults. Simulation results show that the methodology is on average 17.4 times faster, with 5.2% error in accuracy, when compared with HSPICE. The final contribution presents an accelerated simulation methodology of resistive opens to address the problem of long simulation time of delay fault when considering process variation. The methodology is implemented by using two efficient algorithms to accelerate the computation of transient gate output voltage and timing critical resistance of an open fault-site. Simulation results show that the methodology is on average up to 52 times faster than HSPICE, with 4.2% error in accuracy

Investigation into voltage and process variation-aware manufacturing test

Increasing integration and complexity in IC design provides challenges for manufacturing testing. This thesis studies how process and supply voltage variation influence defect behaviour to determine the impact on manufacturing test cost and quality. The focus is on logic testing of static CMOS designs with respect to two important defect types in deep submicron CMOS: resistive bridges and full opens. The first part of the thesis addresses testing for resistive bridge defects in designs with multiple supply voltage settings. To enable analysis, a fault simulator is developed using a supply voltage-aware model for bridge defect behaviour. The analysis shows that for high defect coverage it is necessary to perform test for more than one supply voltage setting, due to supply voltage-dependent behaviour. A low-cost and effective test method is presented consisting of multi-voltage test generation that achieves high defect coverage and test set size reduction without compromise to defect coverage. Experiments on synthesised benchmarks with realistic bridge locations validate the proposed method.The second part focuses on the behaviour of full open defects under supply voltage variation. The aim is to determine the appropriate value of supply voltage to use when testing. Two models are considered for the behaviour of full open defects with and without gate tunnelling leakage influence. Analysis of the supply voltage-dependent behaviour of full open defects is performed to determine if it is required to test using more than one supply voltage to detect all full open defects. Experiments on synthesised benchmarks using an extended version of the fault simulator tool mentioned above, measure the quantitative impact of supply voltage variation on defect coverage.The final part studies the impact of process variation on the behaviour of bridge defects. Detailed analysis using synthesised ISCAS benchmarks and realistic bridge model shows that process variation leads to additional faults. If process variation is not considered in test generation, the test will fail to detect some of these faults, which leads to test escapes. A novel metric to quantify the impact of process variation on test quality is employed in the development of a new test generation tool, which achieves high bridge defect coverage. The method achieves a user-specified test quality with test sets which are smaller than test sets generated without consideration of process variation

The 1992 4th NASA SERC Symposium on VLSI Design

Papers from the fourth annual NASA Symposium on VLSI Design, co-sponsored by the IEEE, are presented. Each year this symposium is organized by the NASA Space Engineering Research Center (SERC) at the University of Idaho and is held in conjunction with a quarterly meeting of the NASA Data System Technology Working Group (DSTWG). One task of the DSTWG is to develop new electronic technologies that will meet next generation electronic data system needs. The symposium provides insights into developments in VLSI and digital systems which can be used to increase data systems performance. The NASA SERC is proud to offer, at its fourth symposium on VLSI design, presentations by an outstanding set of individuals from national laboratories, the electronics industry, and universities. These speakers share insights into next generation advances that will serve as a basis for future VLSI design

Multi-level simulation of nano-electronic digital circuits on GPUs

Simulation of circuits and faults is an essential part in design and test validation tasks of contemporary nano-electronic digital integrated CMOS circuits. Shrinking technology processes with smaller feature sizes and strict performance and reliability requirements demand not only detailed validation of the functional properties of a design, but also accurate validation of non-functional aspects including the timing behavior. However, due to the rising complexity of the circuit behavior and the steady growth of the designs with respect to the transistor count, timing-accurate simulation of current designs requires a lot of computational effort which can only be handled by proper abstraction and a high degree of parallelization. This work presents a simulation model for scalable and accurate timing simulation of digital circuits on data-parallel graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerators. By providing compact modeling and data-structures as well as through exploiting multiple dimensions of parallelism, the simulation model enables not only fast and timing-accurate simulation at logic level, but also massively-parallel simulation with switch level accuracy. The model facilitates extensions for fast and efficient fault simulation of small delay faults at logic level, as well as first-order parametric and parasitic faults at switch level. With the parallelization on GPUs, detailed and scalable simulation is enabled that is applicable even to multi-million gate designs. This way, comprehensive analyses of realistic timing-related faults in presence of process- and parameter variations are enabled for the first time. Additional simulation efficiency is achieved by merging the presented methods in a unified simulation model, that allows to combine the unique advantages of the different levels of abstraction in a mixed-abstraction multi-level simulation flow to reach even higher speedups. Experimental results show that the implemented parallel approach achieves unprecedented simulation throughput as well as high speedup compared to conventional timing simulators. The underlying model scales for multi-million gate designs and gives detailed insights into the timing behavior of digital CMOS circuits, thereby enabling large-scale applications to aid even highly complex design and test validation tasks