Testing of Ultra Low Voltage VLSI Chips using the Superconducting Single-Photon Detector (SSPD)

In this paper we discuss the use of the Superconducting Single-Photon Detector (SSPD) [ I ] in the framework of the Picosecond Imaging Circuit Analysis (PICA) [2] technique for testing chips by extracting electrical waveforms, propagation delays and skews. An IBM microprocessor fabricated in a 0.13 μm technology with 1.2 V nominal supply voltage V DD will be used as a benchmark for characterizing the detector and evaluating its applicability to future technologies with low V DD and high frequency clocks.