Advances in design methods and process technologies have resulted in a continuous increase in the complexity of integrated circuits (ICs). However, the increased complexity and nanometer-size features of modern ICs make them susceptible to manufacturing defects, as well as performance and quality issues. Testing for Small-Delay Defects in Nanoscale CMOS Integrated Circuits covers common problems in areas such as process variations, power supply noise, crosstalk, resistive opens/bridges, and design-for-manufacturing (DfM)-related rule violations. The book also addresses testing for small-delay defects (SDDs), which can cause immediate timing failures on both critical and non-critical paths in the circuit. Overviews semiconductor industry test challenges and the need for SDD testing, including basic concepts and introductory material Describes algorithmic solutions incorporated in commercial tools from Mentor Graphics Reviews SDD testing based on "alternative methods" that explores new metrics, top-off ATPG, and circuit topology-based solutions Highlights the advantages and disadvantages of a diverse set of metrics, and identifies scope for improvement Written from the triple viewpoint of university researchers, EDA tool developers, and chip designers and tool users, this book is the first of its kind to address all aspects of SDD testing from such a diverse perspective. The book is designed as a one-stop reference for current industrial practices, research challenges in the domain of SDD testing, and recent developments in SDD solutions.

Advances in design methods and process technologies have resulted in a continuous increase in the complexity of integrated circuits (ICs). However, the increased complexity and nanometer-size features of modern ICs make them susceptible to manufacturing defects, as well as performance and quality issues. Testing for Small-Delay Defects in Nanoscale CMOS Integrated Circuits covers common problems in areas such as process variations, power supply noise, crosstalk, resistive opens/bridges, and design-for-manufacturing (DfM)-related rule violations. The book also addresses testing for small-delay defects (SDDs), which can cause immediate timing failures on both critical and non-critical paths in the circuit. Overviews semiconductor industry test challenges and the need for SDD testing, including basic concepts and introductory material Describes algorithmic solutions incorporated in commercial tools from Mentor Graphics Reviews SDD testing based on "alternative methods" that explores new metrics, top-off ATPG, and circuit topology-based solutions Highlights the advantages and disadvantages of a diverse set of metrics, and identifies scope for improvement Written from the triple viewpoint of university researchers, EDA tool developers, and chip designers and tool users, this book is the first of its kind to address all aspects of SDD testing from such a diverse perspective. The book is designed as a one-stop reference for current industrial practices, research challenges in the domain of SDD testing, and recent developments in SDD solutions.

This book will introduce new techniques for detecting and diagnosing small-delay defects in integrated circuits. Although this sort of timing defect is commonly found in integrated circuits manufactured with nanometer technology, this will be the first book to introduce effective and scalable methodologies for screening and diagnosing small-delay defects, including important parameters such as process variations, crosstalk, and power supply noise.

The 2nd edition of defect oriented testing has been extensively updated. New chapters on Functional, Parametric Defect Models and Inductive fault Analysis and Yield Engineering have been added to provide a link between defect sources and yield. The chapter on RAM testing has been updated with focus on parametric and SRAM stability testing. Similarly, newer material has been incorporated in digital fault modeling and analog testing chapters. The strength of Defect Oriented Testing for nano-Metric CMOS VLSIs lies in its industrial relevance.

This book contains extended and revised versions of the best papers presented at the 27th IFIP WG 10.5/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, VLSI-SoC 2019, held in Cusco, Peru, in October 2019. The 15 full papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from the 28 papers (out of 82 submissions) presented at the conference. The papers discuss the latest academic and industrial results and developments as well as future trends in the field of System-on-Chip (SoC) design, considering the challenges of nano-scale, state-of-the-art and emerging manufacturing technologies. In particular they address cutting-edge research fields like heterogeneous, neuromorphic and brain-inspired, biologically-inspired, approximate computing systems.

The failure of devices due to timing-related defects is becoming increasingly prominent in the nanometer era, thereby causing quality and reliability concerns. The variations in physical parameters and the increasing influence of environmental factors are the potential sources of such timing-related defects. In this dissertation we present novel techniques for detection and diagnosis of such timing-related defects, in particular small delay defects, in modern integrated circuits. First, an approach capable of identifying the locations of distributed small delay defects, arising due to manufacturing aberrations, is proposed. It is shown that the proposed formulation can be transformed into a Boolean Satisfiability form to be solved by any SAT solver. The approach is capable of providing a small number of alternative sets of defective segments. One of the solutions is the actual defect configuration. This is shown to be a very important property towards the effective identification of the defective segments. Experimental analysis on ISCAS and ITC benchmark suites show that the proposed approach is highly scalable and identifies the location of multiple delay defects. Second, a Monte Carlo based approach is proposed capable of identifying in a path-implicit and scalable manner the distributions that describe the delay of every path in a combinational circuit. Furthermore, a scalable approach to select critical paths from a potentially exponential number of path candidates is presented. Paths and their delay distributions are stored in Zero Suppressed Binary Decision Diagrams. Experimental results on some of the largest ISCAS-89 and ITC-99 benchmarks shows that the proposed method is highly scalable and effective. Lastly, an approach to select a set of longest (highest critical) paths under a probabilistic delay model is presented. It is shown how to select a set of top critical paths that need to be tested for a given test margin and subsequently, it is shown how one can select critical paths to effectively test a device for small delay defects that may occur due to undesirable process shifts in different pockets of the device. Experimental analysis compares the proposed approach to recent approaches in the literature that claim to select critical paths for testing and merits both based on their effectiveness in detecting random delay defects in the device under test.

Traditional at-speed test methods cannot guarantee high quality test results as they face many new challenges. Supply noise effects on chip performance, high test pattern volume, small delay defect test pattern generation, high cost of test implementation and application, and utilizing low-cost testers are among these challenges. This book discusses these challenges in detail and proposes new techniques and methodologies to improve the overall quality of the transition fault test.