A novel method for minimizing transient current test time by exploiting RES in SRAM

As technology advances, circuit density and complexity increases in integrated circuits which make the devices vulnerable to different types of manufacturing defects. In such cases, even the occurrence of a fault may be critical. Hence, ensuring Static random access memory (SRAM) reliability and quality with high priority is essential. In this paper, an innovative approach to SRAM testing—wavelet-based transient supply current testing with modified March sequence exploiting read equivalent stress (RES) is introduced for fault detection. The main contribution of this research work is the unique testing solution that ensures a minimum test time for the detection of open defects in SRAMs. In comparison with other techniques that solely rely on the hardware implementation for fault detection, the proposed technique reduces design parameters, such as the area overhead, power consumption, hardware complexity and performance overhead. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed technique can provide high reliability and efficiency and reduce test time (25%) compared to other methods. A complete evaluation of the proposed technique in terms of the overall memory performance is presented in this work. The main objective of this study is to investigate the efficiency of wavelet-based transient current test in detecting all open defects targeted in this work in SRAMs amidst process variations. Moreover, the conventional test time of transient current test is minimized exploiting the effects of RES.