Design for reliability

The advent of the ULSI era, and the continuing decrease of the critical dim ensions of MOSFETs, has raised a number of issues concerning the prediction of device reliability, and the consequences for overall product reliabilit y. The established practice has been to assure reliability at the end of th e lengthy product cycle. However, to achieve a shorter time-to-market, prod uct reliability concerns should be addressed at the design stage ("design f or reliability"). Accordingly, the design and implementation of reliability simulation tools, which give a prediction of the susceptibility of an IC d esign to device failure mechanisms, is becoming critical. This paper review s some of the reliability simulation tools that are currently available to industry. The capability of the most popular of these tools is described fo r a number of different reliability hazards. A topical reliability simulati on issue is addressed, and a statistical validation, comparing measured and simulated degraded ring oscillator data, is presented. (C) 2000 Elsevier S cience Ltd. All rights reserved.