Silicon odometer : an on-chip reliability monitor for measuring frequency degradation of digital circuits
Precise measurement of digital circuit degradation is a key aspect of aging tolerant digital circuit design. In this study, we present a fully digital on-chip reliability monitor for high-resolution frequency degradation measurements of digital circuits. The proposed technique measures the beat freq...
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Main Authors: | , , |
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Other Authors: | |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2010
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/93518 http://hdl.handle.net/10220/6327 |
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Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
Language: | English |
Summary: | Precise measurement of digital circuit degradation is a key aspect of aging tolerant digital circuit design. In this study, we present a fully digital on-chip reliability monitor for high-resolution frequency degradation measurements of digital circuits. The proposed technique measures the beat frequency of two ring oscillators, one stressed and the other unstressed, to achieve 50 X higher delay sensing resolution than that of prior techniques. The differential frequency measurement technique also eliminates the effect of common-mode environmental variation such as temperature drifts between each sampling points. A 265 X 132 mum square test chip implementing this design has been fabricated in a 1.2 V, 130 nm CMOS technology. The measured resolution of the proposed monitoring circuit was 0.02%, as the ring oscillator in this design has a period of 4 ns; this translates to a temporal resolution of 0.8 ps. The 2 mus measurement time was sufficiently short to suppress the unwanted recovery effect from concealing the actual circuit degradation. |
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