Timing-Aware Multiple-Delay-Fault Diagnosis

Vishal Mehta1,  Malgorzata Marek-Sadowska1,  Kun-Han Tsai2,  Janusz Rajski2
1University of California Santa Barbara, 2Mentor Graphics Corporation


Abstract

With feature sizes steadily shrinking, manufacturing defects and parameter variations oftern cause design timing failures. It is essential that these errors be correctly and quickly diagnosed. In this paper, we analyze the multiple-delay-fault diagnosis problem and propose a novel, simulation based approach to solve it. We enhance the diagnostic resolution by processing failure logs at various slower-than-nominal clock frequencies. We experimentally detemined our diagnosis algorithm's sensitivity to delay variations.