Fault Contrast: A New Voltage Contrast VLSI Diagnosis Technique

Fault contrast is a differential analog technique that yields high-quality voltage contrast images of integrated circuit (IC) pass vs. fail operation. Fault contrast is applicable where the IC failure mode is sensitive to an external parameter, e.g. clock frequency or supply voltage. Fault contrast requires only simple and inexpensive analog signal processing. We demonstrate fault contrast with an analysis of an Intel 80286 microprocessor failure.