Fault-Tolerant Systems

CHAPTER 8 Defect Tolerance in VLSI Circuits

With the continuing increase in the total number of devices in VLSI circuits (e.g., microprocessors) and in the density of these devices (due to the reduction in their size) has come an increasing need for defect tolerance. Some of the millions of sub-micron devices that are included in a VLSI chip are bound to have imperfections resulting in yield-reducing manufacturing defects, where yield is defined as the percentage of operational chips out of the total number fabricated.

Consequently, increasing attention is being paid to the development and use of defect-tolerance techniques for yield enhancement, to complement existing efforts at the manufacturing stage. Design-stage yield enhancement techniques ...