Test Algorithms for ECC-Based Memory Repair in Ultimate CMOS and Post-CMOS

In modern SoCs embedded memories should be protected by ECC against field failures to achieve acceptable reliability. They should also be repaired after fabrication to achieve acceptable fabrication yield. In technologies affected by high defect densities, conventional repair induces very high costs. To reduce it, we can use ECC-based repair, consisting in using the ECC for fixing words comprising a single faulty cell and self-repair to fix all other faulty words. However, as we show in this paper, for high defect densities the diagnosis circuitry required for ECC-based repair may induce very large hardware cost. To fix this issue, we introduce a new family of memory test algorithms that exhibit a property we termed as “single-read double-fault detection”. This approach gains interest in ultimate CMOS and post-CMOS technologies, where the defect densities are expected to increase significantly, and/or in very-low power design, as very-low voltage sharply increases defect densities.