On-Chip Diagnosis for Aging and Early-Life Failure Detection

尽管半导体行业尽了最大努力，但集成电子系统本质上并不健壮，因为它们是“天生”(制造)的，具有独特的“个性”，这源于该行业无法精确地制造其底层电路，也无法编写控制由此产生的不确定性的软件。环境(如温度、噪音等)进一步塑造了一个完整的系统个性。和使用率(即执行的应用程序的频率和类型)，由于两者都可以随时间波动，因此系统个性也可以。由于各种磨损机制，系统也会“老化”和退化，但也会意外地由于早期的故障源。这些“先天和后天”的影响使得设计一个强大的集成系统变得极其困难，该系统将为所有可能的个性最佳地运行。这项研究通过开发一种通用的、可扩展的片上电路来测试和诊断系统的任何故障，从而实现集成系统的健壮性，该电路可以测试和诊断任何系统，而不会造成显著的功率和性能损失。这项研究工作的成功将有助于确保集成系统制造商能够以最具成本效益的方式生产坚固耐用的系统，尽管有大量和各种故障来源对系统可靠性产生负面影响。此外，我们需要在代表性不足的群体中继续发展STEM(科学、技术、工程和数学)教育，这一努力将通过参与不同的研究生和本科生研究人员群体来实现。

Despite the best efforts of the semiconductor industry, integrated electronic systems are not inherently robust because they are "born" (manufactured) with a unique "personality" that stems from the industry's inability to precisely fabricate their underlying circuits, and to write software that controls the resulting uncertainty. An integrated system personality is further shaped by its environment (e.g., temperature, noise, etc.) and usage (i.e., the frequency and type of applications executed), and since both can fluctuate over time, so can the system personality. Systems also "grow old" and degrade predictably due to various wear-out mechanisms but also unexpectedly due to early-life failure sources. These "nature and nurture" influences make it extremely difficult to design a robust integrated system that will operate optimally for all possible personalities. This research achieves integrated-system robustness by judiciously testing and diagnosing the system for any faults through the development of a generalized, scalable on-chip circuitry that tests and diagnoses any system without significant power and performance penalty. Success of this research effort will help ensure that integrated-system manufacturers can produce robust systems, in the most cost-effective manner, despite the large number and variety of failure sources that negatively impact system reliability. Also, our need for continued development of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education in under-represented groups will be aided by this effort via involvement of a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate researchers.