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

Fault and Defect Tolerant Computer Architectures: Reliable Computing With Unreliable Devices

This research addresses design of a reliable computer from unreliable device technologies. A system architecture is developed for a fault and defect tolerant (FDT) computer. Trade-offs between different techniques are studied and yield and hardware cost models are developed. Fault and defect tolerant designs are created for the processor and the cache memory. Simulation results for the content-addressable memory (CAM)-based cache show 90% yield with device failure probabilities of 3 x 10(-6), three orders of magnitude better than non fault tolerant caches of the same size. The entire processor achieves 70% yield with device failure probabilities exceeding 10(-6). The required hardware redundancy is approximately 15 times that of a non-fault tolerant design. While larger than current FT designs, this architecture allows the use of devices much more likely to fail than silicon CMOS. As part of model development, an improved model is derived for NAND Multiplexing. The model is the first accurate model for small and medium amounts of redundancy. Previous models are extended to account for dependence between the inputs and produce more accurate results

Investigation into yield and reliability enhancement of TSV-based three-dimensional integration circuits

Three dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) have been acknowledged as a promising technology to overcome the interconnect delay bottleneck brought by continuous CMOS scaling. Recent research shows that through-silicon-vias (TSVs), which act as vertical links between layers, pose yield and reliability challenges for 3D design. This thesis presents three original contributions.The first contribution presents a grouping-based technique to improve the yield of 3D ICs under manufacturing TSV defects, where regular and redundant TSVs are partitioned into groups. In each group, signals can select good TSVs using rerouting multiplexers avoiding defective TSVs. Grouping ratio (regular to redundant TSVs in one group) has an impact on yield and hardware overhead. Mathematical probabilistic models are presented for yield analysis under the influence of independent and clustering defect distributions. Simulation results using MATLAB show that for a given number of TSVs and TSV failure rate, careful selection of grouping ratio results in achieving 100% yield at minimal hardware cost (number of multiplexers and redundant TSVs) in comparison to a design that does not exploit TSV grouping ratios. The second contribution presents an efficient online fault tolerance technique based on redundant TSVs, to detect TSV manufacturing defects and address thermal-induced reliability issue. The proposed technique accounts for both fault detection and recovery in the presence of three TSV defects: voids, delamination between TSV and landing pad, and TSV short-to-substrate. Simulations using HSPICE and ModelSim are carried out to validate fault detection and recovery. Results show that regular and redundant TSVs can be divided into groups to minimise area overhead without affecting the fault tolerance capability of the technique. Synthesis results using 130-nm design library show that 100% repair capability can be achieved with low area overhead (4% for the best case). The last contribution proposes a technique with joint consideration of temperature mitigation and fault tolerance without introducing additional redundant TSVs. This is achieved by reusing spare TSVs that are frequently deployed for improving yield and reliability in 3D ICs. The proposed technique consists of two steps: TSV determination step, which is for achieving optimal partition between regular and spare TSVs into groups; The second step is TSV placement, where temperature mitigation is targeted while optimizing total wirelength and routing difference. Simulation results show that using the proposed technique, 100% repair capability is achieved across all (five) benchmarks with an average temperature reduction of 75.2? (34.1%) (best case is 99.8? (58.5%)), while increasing wirelength by a small amount

Modelling and Test Generation for Crosstalk Faults in DSM Chips

In the era of deep submicron technology (DSM), many System-on-Chip (SoC) applications require the components to be operating at high clock speeds. With the shrinking feature size and ever increasing clock frequencies, the DSM technology has led to a well-known problem of Signal Integrity (SI) more especially in the connecting layout design. The increasing aspect ratios of metal wires and also the ratio of coupling capacitance over substrate capacitance result in electrical coupling of interconnects which leads to crosstalk problems. In this thesis, first the work carried out to model the crosstalk behaviour between aggressor and victim by considering the distributed RLGC parameters of interconnect and the coupling capacitance and mutual conductance between the two nets is presented. The proposed model also considers the RC linear models of the CMOS drivers and receivers. The behaviour of crosstalk in case of under etching problem has been studied and modelled by distributing and approximating the defect behaviour throughout the nets. Next, the proposed model has also been extended to model the behaviour of crosstalk in case of one victim is influenced by several aggressors by considering all aggressors have similar effect (worst-case) on victim. In all the above cases simulation experiments were also carried out and compared with well-known circuit simulation tool PSPICE. It has been proved that the generated crosstalk model is faster and the results generated are within 10% of error margin compared to latter simulation tool. Because of the accuracy and speed of the proposed model, the model is very useful for both SoC designers and test engineers to analyse the crosstalk behaviour. Each manufactured device needs to be tested thoroughly to ensure the functionality before its delivery. The test pattern generation for crosstalk faults is also necessary to test the corresponding crosstalk faults. In this thesis, the well-known PODEM algorithm for stuck-at faults is extended to generate the test patterns for crosstalk faults between single aggressor and single victim. To apply modified PODEM for crosstalk faults, the transition behaviour has been divided into two logic parts as before transition and after transition. After finding individually required test patterns for before transition and after transition, the generated logic vectors are appended to create transition test patterns for crosstalk faults. The developed algorithm is also applied for a few ISCAS 85 benchmark circuits and the fault coverage is found excellent in most circuits. With the incorporation of proposed algorithm into the ATPG tools, the efficiency of testing will be improved by generating the test patterns for crosstalk faults besides for the conventional stuck-at faults. In generating test patterns for crosstalk faults on single victim due to multiple aggressors, the modified PODEM algorithm is found to be more time consuming. The search capability of Genetic Algorithms in finding the required combination of several input factors for any optimized problem fascinated to apply GA for generating test patterns as generating the test pattern is also similar to finding the required vector out of several input transitions. Initially the GA is applied for generating test patterns for stuck-at faults and compared the results with PODEM algorithm. As the fault coverage is almost similar to the deterministic algorithm PODEM, the GA developed for stuck-at faults is extended to find test patterns for crosstalk faults between single aggressor and single victim. The elitist GA is also applied for a few ISCAS 85 benchmark circuits. Later the algorithm is extended to generate test patterns for worst-case crosstalk faults. It has been proved that elitist GA developed in this thesis is also very useful in generating test patterns for crosstalk faults especially for multiple aggressor and single victim crosstalk faults

Index to 1981 NASA Tech Briefs, volume 6, numbers 1-4

Short announcements of new technology derived from the R&D activities of NASA are presented. These briefs emphasize information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines and are issued to encourage commercial application. This index for 1981 Tech Briefs contains abstracts and four indexes: subject, personal author, originating center, and Tech Brief Number. The following areas are covered: electronic components and circuits, electronic systems, physical sciences, materials, life sciences, mechanics, machinery, fabrication technology, and mathematics and information sciences

Characterization and Implementation of Fault-Tolerant Vertical Links for 3-D Networks-on-Chip

Through silicon vias (TSVs) provide an efficient way to support vertical communication among different layers of a vertically stacked chip, enabling scalable 3-D networks-on-chip (NoC) architectures. Unfortunately, low TSV yields significantly impact the feasibility of high-bandwidth vertical connectivity. In this paper, we present a semi-automated design flow for 3-D NoCs including a defect-tolerance scheme to increase the global yield of 3-D stacked chips. Starting from an accurate physical and geometrical model of TSVs: 1) we extract a circuit-level model for vertical interconnections; 2) we use it to evaluate the design implications of extending switch architectures with ports in the vertical direction; moreover, 3) we present a defect-tolerance technique for TSV-based multi-bit links through an effective use of redundancy; and finally, 4) we present a design flow allowing for post-layout simulation of NoCs with links in all three physical dimensions. Experimental results show that a 3-D NoC implementation yields around 10% frequency improvement over a 2-D one, thanks to the propagation delay advantage of TSVs and the shorter links. In addition, the adopted fault tolerance scheme demonstrates a significant yield improvement, ranging from 66% to 98%, with a low area cost (20.9% on a vertical link in a NoC switch, which leads a modest 2.1% increase in the total switch area) in 130 nm technology, with minimal impact on very large-scale integrated design and test flows