Case study: A tool centric approach for fault avoidance in microchip designs

— Achieving reliability in fault tolerant systems requires both avoidance and redundancy. This study focuses on avoidance as it pertains to the design of microchips. The lifecycle of a microchip is centered on the design of every block that makes up the hierarchy of the design. Early in the lifecycle the emphasis is on obtaining clean and fault free blocks for every CAD (Computer Aided Design) tool that the block is subjected to. A block is either a schematic or the artwork of a given functional circuit. As a block evolves, a regression of already released CAD tools is run to obtain predetermined levels of quality. Without running these regression suites, developers risk delaying the appearances of faults; which in the field of microchip development can prove extremely costly, especially when entering the manufacturing stages where the costs of making masks and test chips can be prohibitive. This study uses traditional data mining techniques to follow the evolution of a number of leg...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: SEDE
• Authors: Clemente Izurieta
• Keywords: Computer Aided Design, Fault Free Blocks, Fault Tolerant Systems, SEDE 2007, Software Engineering