Silent Error Corruption: The New Reliability and Test Challenge

Large commercial datacenters have recently highlighted a new and significant test and reliability challenge: manufacturing test escapes that cause silent data errors during operation. While there are many potential sources that can cause these failures, research is pointing to timing errors from random process variations, accentuated in power saving low voltage operation, being a significant contributor. Screening out such failures will require new and better timing tests that can reliably detect outlier circuits with path delay failures.