On the reconfiguration of degradable VLSI/WSI arrays

This paper consider the problem of reconfiguring two dimensional very large scale integration (VLSI/WSI) arrays via the degradation approach. In this approach, all elements are treated uniformly and no elements are dedicated as spares. The goal is to derive a fault-free subarray T from the defective host array such that the dimensions of T are larger than some specified minimum. This problem has been shown to be NP-complete under various switching and routing constraints. However, we show that a special case of the reconfiguration problem with row bypass and column rerouting capabilities is optimally solvable in linear time. Using this result, a new fast and efficient reconfiguration algorithm is proposed. Empirical study shows that the new algorithm indeed produces good results in terms of the percentages of harvest and degradation of VLSI/WSI arrays.