Electricity: measuring and testing – Fault detecting in electric circuits and of electric components – Of individual circuit component or element
Reexamination Certificate
2001-05-14
2004-05-18
Cuneo, Kamand (Department: 2829)
Electricity: measuring and testing
Fault detecting in electric circuits and of electric components
Of individual circuit component or element
C324S754120, C250S310000, C250S311000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06737880
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to very large scale integrated (VLSI) circuitry, and in particular relates to a device and method for probing instantaneous high-speed local supply voltage fluctuation in VLSI circuits using infrared emission.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
As VLSI system clock frequencies increase, cycle times become smaller. Fluctuations in gate delay due to such factors as MOSFET strength variations, temperature fluctuations and local supply voltage variation account for an ever greater proportion of cycle time. These variations, which are accounted for by including extra margins in cycle time during the design process, increasingly limit the design options (“design space”) available to engineers.
In particular, gate delay variation due to fluctuations in supply voltage is thought to account, currently, for more than 20 percent of the margin required for maximum delay. While estimates of the magnitude of the instantaneous supply voltage at the drains of MOSFET gates have been deduced based upon knowledge of the physical layout of a typical VLSI circuit, an accurate determination of how supply voltage varies over very short durations has not been made owing to the lack of viable techniques for taking real-time high-speed measurements of supply-voltage variation. An accurate determination may reveal that the margins that have been incorporated as parameters into the design process overestimate the actual supply voltage variation. Consequently, such a determination can lead to a reduction in the budgeted margin and a corresponding widening of the design space. A larger design space, in turn, translates directly into shorter product development cycles and better-targeted product frequencies of operation.
It has been experimentally determined that certain integrated circuit components emit infrared radiation, the intensity of which is functionally related to the supply voltage powering such components. Recent technological advancements in time resolved emission (“TRE”) enables time resolution of emission events on a picosecond (10
−12
s) time scale. These newly developed measurement techniques rely on the dramatic improvement in methods for temporally resolving extremely faint optical signals on extremely short time scales.
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Madland Paul
Samaan Samie B.
Woods Gary L.
Cuneo Kamand
Intel Corporation
Kenyon & Kenyon
Nguyen Jimmy
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