Diagnostic Circuit for Latent Fault Detection in SRAM Row Decoder

Shivendra Singh1, Varshita Gupta1, Anuj Grover1, Kedar Janardan Dhori2
1Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi, 2STMicroelectronics Pvt. Ltd., Greater Noida,


Abstract

Functional safety is crucial in automotive life-critical systems. Early diagnosis of unanticipated faults and failures is necessary to prevent hazardous implications. ISO-26262, Functional Safety-Road Vehicles, is an automotive industry-specific functional safety standard that describes the course for classification, detection and control of potential risks. Electromigration induced open and short defects and Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) are critical failure mechanisms and pose severe reliability concerns as they may escape safety tests during fabrication and cause failures when the chip eventually wears out. This paper analyzes the independent and combined impact of partial resistive defects and BTI on row decoders at 55nm technology node. Presence of resistive defects cause additional delay which gets further increased due to aging (BTI).