Yield analysis of fault-tolerant multichip module systems for massively parallel computing

This paper presents analytical models for evaluating the overall yield of systems manufactured using fault-tolerant multichip modules (MCMs) for massively parallel computing. In the proposed approaches, we employ a novel Markov model to compute the yield. Unlike a previous method which utilizes a binomial distribution, our scheme can employ intermediate tests. Several strategies for appropriately testing fault-tolerant MCMs have been proposed, but little analytical evaluation has been performed. In this paper, it is shown that an efficient test strategy with a modest level of redundancy may exist to achieve virtually 100% first-pass MCM yield for a particular system. We note that a yield-analysis model employing the LRT (Least Recently Tested) test strategy proposed in this paper may provide a very good figure of merit due to its cost, delivery, number of tests and reliability benefits for today´s technology. Extensive parametric results for the analysis are provided to show that our approach can be applied to calculate the overall yield for fault-tolerant MCMs more accurately and efficiently, thereby improving upon the reliability of the entire system