DFT and BIST of a multichip module for high-energy physics experiments

Engineers at Politecnico di Torino designed a multichip module for high-energy physics experiments conducted on the Large Hadron Collider. An array of these MCMs handles multichannel data acquisition and signal processing. Testing the MCM from board to die level required a combination of DFT strategie

Online and Offline BIST in IP-Core Design

This article presents an online and offline built-in self-test architecture implemented as an SRAM intellectual-property core for telecommunication applications. The architecture combines fault-latency reduction, code-based fault detection, and architecture-based fault avoidance to meet reliability constraint

ATLAS Upgrade Instrumentation in the US

Planned upgrades of the LHC over the next decade should allow the machine to operate at a center of mass energy of 14 TeV with instantaneous luminosities in the range 5--7e34 cm^-2 s^-1. With these parameters, ATLAS could collect 3,000 fb^-1 of data in approximately 10 years. However, the conditions under which this data would be acquired are much harsher than those currently encountered at the LHC. For example, the number of proton-proton interactions per bunch crossing will rise from the level of 20--30 per 50 ns crossing observed in 2012 to 140--200 every 25 ns. In order to deepen our understanding of the newly discovered Higgs boson and to extend our searches for physics beyond that new particle, the ATLAS detector, trigger, and readout will have to undergo significant upgrades. In this whitepaper we describe R&D necessary for ATLAS to continue to run effectively at the highest luminosities foreseen from the LHC. Emphasis is placed on those R&D efforts in which US institutions are playing a leading role.Comment: Snowmass contributed paper, 24 pages, 12 figure

A Hierachical Infrastrucutre for SOC Test Management

HD2BIST - a complete hierarchical framework for BIST scheduling, data-patterns delivery, and diagnosis of complex systems - maximizes and simplifies the reuse of built-in test architectures. HD2BIST optimizes the flexibility for chip designers in planning an overall SoC test strategy by defining a test access method that provides direct virtual access to each core of the system

Study and Implementation of an Optimized Modular Architecture for an ATE Test Environment

Implementation of a testbench module which is capable of integrating different Synopsys products. This implementation will optimize test speed in an ATE test environment

펄스 기반 피드 포워드 이퀄라이저를 갖춘 고용량 DRAM을 위한 컨트롤러 PHY 설계

학위논문 (박사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2020. 8. 김수환.A controller PHY for managed DRAM solution, which is a new memory structure to maximize capacity while minimizing refresh power, is presented. Inter-symbol interference is critical in such a high-capacity DRAM interface in which many DRAM chips share a command/address (C/A) channel. A pulse-based feed-forward equalizer (PB-FFE) is introduced to reduce ISI on a C/A channel. The controller PHY supports all the training sequences specified in the DDR4 standard. A glitch-free DCDL is also adopted to perform link training efficiently and to reduce training time. The DQ transmitter adopts quarter-rate architecture to reduce output latency. For the quarter-rate transmitters in DQ, we propose a quadrature error corrector (QEC), in which clock signal phase errors are corrected using two replicas of the 4:1 serializer of the output stage. Pulse shrinking is used to compare and equalize the outputs of these two replica serializers. A controller PHY was fabricated in 55nm CMOS. The PB-FFE increases the timing margin from 0.23UI to 0.29UI at 1067Mbps. At 2133Mbps, the read timing and voltage margins are 0.53UI and 211mV after read training, and the write margins are 0.72UI and 230mV after write training. To validate the QEC effectiveness, a prototype quarter-rate transmitter, including the QEC, was fabricated to another chip in 65nm CMOS. Adopting our QEC, the experimental results show that the output phase errors of the transmitter are reduced to a residual error of 0.8ps, and the output eye width and height are improved by 84% and 61%, respectively, at a data-rate of 12.8Gbps.본 연구에서 용량을 최대화하면서도 리프레시 전력을 최소화할 수 있는 새로운 메모리 구조인 관리형 DRAM 솔루션을 위한 컨트롤러 PHY를 제시하였다. 이와 같은 고용량 DRAM 인터페이스에서는 많은 DRAM 칩이 명령 / 주소 (C/A) 채널을 공유하고 있어서 심볼 간 간섭이 발생한다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 C/A 채널에서의 심볼 간 간섭을 줄이기 위해 펄스 기반 피드 포워드 이퀄라이저 (PB-FFE)를 채택하였다. 또한 본 연구의 컨트롤러 PHY는 DDR4 표준에 지정된 모든 트레이닝 시퀀스를 지원한다. 링크 트레이닝을 효율적으로 수행하고 트레이닝 시간을 줄이기 위해 글리치가 발생하지 않는 디지털 제어 지연 라인 (DCDL)을 채택하였다. 컨트롤러 PHY의 DQ 송신기는 출력 대기 시간을 줄이기 위해 쿼터 레이트 구조를 채택하였다. 쿼터 레이트 송신기의 경우에는 직교 클럭 간 위상 오류가 출력 신호의 무결성에 영향을 주게 된다. 이러한 영향을 최소화하기 위해 본 연구에서는 출력 단의 4 : 1 직렬 변환기의 두 복제본을 사용하여 클록 신호 위상 오류를 수정하는 QEC (Quadrature Error Corrector)를 제안하였다. 복제된 2개의 직렬 변환기의 출력을 비교하고 균등화하기 위해 펄스 수축 지연 라인이 사용되었다. 컨트롤러 PHY는 55nm CMOS 공정으로 제조되었다. PB-FFE는 1067Mbps에서 C/A 채널 타이밍 마진을 0.23UI에서 0.29UI로 증가시킨다. 읽기 트레이닝 후 읽기 타이밍 및 전압 마진은 2133Mbps에서 0.53UI 및 211mV이고, 쓰기 트레이닝 후 쓰기 마진은 0.72UI 및 230mV이다. QEC의 효과를 검증하기 위해 QEC를 포함한 프로토 타입 쿼터 레이트 송신기를 65nm CMOS의 다른 칩으로 제작하였다. QEC를 적용한 실험 결과, 송신기의 출력 위상 오류가 0.8ps의 잔류 오류로 감소하고, 출력 데이터 눈의 폭과 높이가 12.8Gbps의 데이터 속도에서 각각 84 %와 61 % 개선되었음을 보여준다.CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 MOTIVATION 1 1.1.1 HEAVY LOAD C/A CHANNEL 5 1.1.2 QUARTER-RATE ARCHITECTURE IN DQ TRANSMITTER 7 1.1.3 SUMMARY 8 1.2 THESIS ORGANIZATION 10 CHAPTER 2 ARCHITECTURE 11 2.1 MDS DIMM STRUCTURE 11 2.2 MDS CONTROLLER 15 2.3 MDS CONTROLLER PHY 17 2.3.1 INITIALIZATION SEQUENCE 20 2.3.2 LINK TRAINING FINITE-STATE MACHINE 23 2.3.3 POWER DOWN MODE 28 CHAPTER 3 PULSE-BASED FEED-FORWARD EQUALIZER 29 3.1 COMMAND/ADDRESS CHANNEL 29 3.2 COMMAND/ADDRESS TRANSMITTER 33 3.3 PULSE-BASED FEED-FORWARD EQUALIZER 35 CHAPTER 4 CIRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION 39 4.1 BUILDING BLOCKS 39 4.1.1 ALL-DIGITAL PHASE-LOCKED LOOP (ADPLL) 39 4.1.2 ALL-DIGITAL DELAY-LOCKED LOOP (ADDLL) 44 4.1.3 GLITCH-FREE DCDL CONTROL 47 4.1.4 DUTY-CYCLE CORRECTOR (DCC) 50 4.1.5 DQ/DQS TRANSMITTER 52 4.1.6 DQ/DQS RECEIVER 54 4.1.7 ZQ CALIBRATION 56 4.2 MODELING AND VERIFICATION OF LINK TRAINING 59 4.3 BUILT-IN SELF-TEST CIRCUITS 66 CHAPTER 5 QUADRATURE ERROR CORRECTOR USING REPLICA SERIALIZERS AND PULSE-SHRINKING DELAY LINES 69 5.1 PHASE CORRECTION USING REPLICA SERIALIZERS AND PULSE-SHRINKING UNITS 69 5.2 OVERALL QEC ARCHITECTURE AND ITS OPERATION 71 5.3 FINE DELAY UNIT IN THE PSDL 76 CHAPTER 6 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 78 6.1 CONTROLLER PHY 78 6.2 PROTOTYPE QEC 88 CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION 94 BIBLIOGRAPHY 96Docto

Securing IEEE P1687 On-chip Instrumentation Access Using PUF

As the complexity of VLSI designs grows, the amount of embedded instrumentation in system-on-a-chip designs increases at an exponential rate. Such structures serve various purposes throughout the life-cycle of VLSI circuits, e.g. in post-silicon validation and debug, production test and diagnosis, as well as during in-field test and maintenance. Reliable access mechanisms for embedded instruments are therefore key to rapid chip development and secure system maintenance. Reconfigurable scan networks defined by IEEE Std. P1687 emerge as a scalable and cost-effective access medium for on-chip instrumentation. The accessibility offered by reconfigurable scan networks contradicts security and safety requirements for embedded instrumentation. Embedded instrumentation is an integral system component that remains functional throughout the lifetime of a chip. To prevent harmful activities, such as tampering with safety-critical systems, and reduce the risk of intellectual property infringement, the access to embedded instrumentation requires protection. This thesis provides a novel, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) based secure access method for on-chip instruments which enhances the security of IJTAG network at low hardware cost and with less routing congestion

From FPGA to ASIC: A RISC-V processor experience

This work document a correct design flow using these tools in the Lagarto RISC- V Processor and the RTL design considerations that must be taken into account, to move from a design for FPGA to design for ASIC

Synthesizable delay line architectures for digitally controlled voltage regulators

Voltage regulators used in the integrated circuit (IC) industry require precise voltage regulation. In digitally controlled switching converters, this precise voltage regulation is achieved by high resolution digital pulse width modulators (DPWM). Digital delay lines can be used to generate the pulse width modulation (PWM) signal. Conventional delay lines are designed in a full custom design methodology which is extremely slow and expensive compared to register-transfer level (RTL) based designs; also RTL based designs are technology independent so the same design can be used with new technologies. The purpose of this work is to introduce a new architecture for the fully synthesizable digital delay line used in digitally controlled voltage regulators. A comparison between the proposed scheme and the conventional delay line is done post synthesis on the key delay line specifications like linearity, area, complexity, and compensation for process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations for multiple clock frequencies. Both schemes are designed using a hardware description language (HDL) and synthesized using Intel 32nm technology. The comparison showed that the proposed architecture has better linearity, area, and also it has a fast calibration time with respect to conventional delay lines. The delay lines are designed in parameterized way in order to make the design suitable for multiple frequencies

An IoT Endpoint System-on-Chip for Secure and Energy-Efficient Near-Sensor Analytics

Near-sensor data analytics is a promising direction for IoT endpoints, as it minimizes energy spent on communication and reduces network load - but it also poses security concerns, as valuable data is stored or sent over the network at various stages of the analytics pipeline. Using encryption to protect sensitive data at the boundary of the on-chip analytics engine is a way to address data security issues. To cope with the combined workload of analytics and encryption in a tight power envelope, we propose Fulmine, a System-on-Chip based on a tightly-coupled multi-core cluster augmented with specialized blocks for compute-intensive data processing and encryption functions, supporting software programmability for regular computing tasks. The Fulmine SoC, fabricated in 65nm technology, consumes less than 20mW on average at 0.8V achieving an efficiency of up to 70pJ/B in encryption, 50pJ/px in convolution, or up to 25MIPS/mW in software. As a strong argument for real-life flexible application of our platform, we show experimental results for three secure analytics use cases: secure autonomous aerial surveillance with a state-of-the-art deep CNN consuming 3.16pJ per equivalent RISC op; local CNN-based face detection with secured remote recognition in 5.74pJ/op; and seizure detection with encrypted data collection from EEG within 12.7pJ/op.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication to the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems - I: Regular Paper