Variation-Aware Fault Modeling

Abstract--To achieve a high product quality for nano-scale systems both realistic defect mechanisms and process variations must be taken into account. While existing approaches for variation-aware digital testing either restrict themselves to special classes of defects or assume given probability distributions to model variabilities, the proposed approach combines defectoriented testing with statistical library characterization. It uses Monte Carlo simulations at electrical level to extract delay distributions of cells in the presence of defects and for the defectfree case. This allows distinguishing the effects of process variations on the cell delay from defect-induced cell delays under process variations. To provide a suitable interface for test algorithms at higher levels action the distributions are represented as histograms and stored in a histogram data base (HDB). Thus, the computationally expensive defect analysis needs to be performed only once as a preprocessing step for lib...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: ATS
• Authors: Fabian Hopsch, Bernd Becker, Sybille Hellebrand, Ilia Polian, Bernd Straube, Wolfgang Vermeiren, Hans-Joachim Wunderlich
• Keywords: ATS 2010, Cell Delays, Hardware, Library Characterization, Process Variations