A. Anzai et al., AN AUTOMATED ON-CHIP DIRECT WIRING MODIFICATION FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE LSIS, IEICE transactions on electronics, E77C(2), 1994, pp. 263-272
It has become more important to shorten development periods of high pe
rformance computer systems and their LSIs. During debugging of compute
r prototypes, logic designers request very frequent LSI refabrication
to change logic circuits and to add some functions in spite of their e
xtensive logic simulation by several GFLOPS supercomputers. To meet th
ese demands, an automated on-chip direct wiring modification system ha
s been developed, which enables wire-cut and via-digging by a precise
focused ion beam machine, and via-filling and jumper-writing by a lase
r CVD machine, directly on pre-redesign (original) chips. This modific
ation system was applied to LSI reworks during the development of Hita
chi large scale computers M-880 and S-3800, and contributed to shorten
system debugging period by four to six months.