Realistic fault extraction for high-quality design and test of VLSI systems

The purpose of this paper is to present a methodology for circuit and realistic fault extraction, and its implementation in a new tool, lobs, to be included in a virtual test environment, DOTLab. Digital, analog and mixed signal ICs, implemented in CMOS, bipolar or BiCMOS technologies are handled both in Manhattan and 45/spl deg/ geometries. Higher level design data, obtained in the top-down design flow, is used for realistic fault characterization. A sliding window algorithm is extended for fault extraction of non-orthogonal geometries. An accurate critical area evaluation algorithm is proposed to compute the probability of occurrence of the defects. Over 100,000 transistor ICs are analyzed for bridging defects.