Should yield be a design objective?

The objectives of good chip design have traditionally included issues like performance, power and reliability. Yield is rarely considered during the design process, except in the design of memory ICs, where specific defect-tolerance techniques are incorporated into the architecture for yield enhancement. In order to make the case for establishing yield as another design objective we must first prove that a chip's yield cannot only be affected, but consistently improved, by decisions made during the design process.