High-reliability fault-tolerant 16-MBit memory chip

Author

Stapper, C.H. ; Fifield, J.A. ; Kalter, H.L. ; Klaasen, W.A.

Volume

42

Issue

4

fYear

1993

fDate

12/1/1993 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

596

Lastpage

603

Abstract

A combination of redundant circuits and error-correcting-code circuits have been implemented on a 16-Mb memory chip. The combination of these circuits results in a synergistic fault-tolerance scheme that makes this chip immune to a high level of manufacturing and reliability defects. Experiments have been performed with highly defective chips to test the error-correction capability of this chip and to determine models for the tradeoff between manufacturing yields and reliability. Additional experiments have been done with accelerated protons to investigate the soft-error sensitivity of this chip. Results show no soft-error reliability failures, including those caused by cosmic-particle radiation. Negative binomial distributions were used to evaluate the experiments. The correlation between manufacturing-faults and stress-failures were modeled with a bivariate negative-binomial distribution

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; circuit reliability; error correction codes; failure analysis; fault tolerant computing; integrated circuit testing; integrated memory circuits; proton effects; 16 Mbit; 16-MBit memory chip; CMOS process; accelerated protons; bivariate negative-binomial distribution; chip reliability; cosmic-particle radiation; defect immunity; error-correcting-code circuits; fault-tolerant memory chip; manufacturing yields; manufacturing-faults; negative binomial distributions; redundant circuits; soft-error sensitivity; stress-failures; synergistic fault-tolerance scheme; Alpha particles; Circuit faults; Error correction; Error correction codes; Fabrication; Fault tolerance; Integrated circuit manufacture; Integrated circuit reliability; Microelectronics; Virtual manufacturing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Reliability, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9529

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/24.273588

Filename

273588