Investigation of Intermittent Resistive Faults in Digital CMOS Circuits

No fault found (NFF) is a major threat in extremely dependable high-end process node integrated systems, in e.g., avionics. One category of NFFs is the intermittent resistive fault (IRF), often originating from bad (e.g., via- or TSV-based) interconnections. This paper will show the impact of these faults on the behavior of a digital CMOS circuit via simulation. As the occurrence rate of this kind of defects can take e.g., one month, while the duration of the defect can be as short as 50 ns, thus to evoke and detect these faults is a huge scientific challenge. Two methods to detect short pulses induced by IRFs are proposed. To improve the task of maintenance of avionics and reduce the current high debugging costs, an on-chip data logging system with time stamp and stored environmental conditions is introduced. Finally, a hardware implementation of an IRF generator is presented.