DefSim: A Remote Laboratory for Studying Physical Defects in CMOS Digital Circuits

This paper describes a unique remote laboratory for studying CMOS physical defects that is meant to be used in advanced courses in the scope of microelectronic design and test. Both the measurement equipment and the remote access mechanism were custom developed in the frame of the European Union project REASON. The core of the equipment is an educational chip that contains different manufacturing defects physically implemented into standard digital cells and small logic circuits on the layout level. The chip is supplied with a dedicated plug-and-play measurement box, which provides an interface between the chip and the training software. This measurement kit offers a glimpse into the silicon reality, revealing behavior of the most common defects and their influence on the circuits' operations. Students can choose between approximately 500 different defects, which can be classified into different groups by studying their properties, and find differences or similarities. The remote server-based version of the laboratory is accessible over the Internet, thereby supporting distance learning and e-learning modes of training. A personal version of the training software is also available.