Low-Cost Design for Repair by Using Circuit Partitioning

As the complexity and the clock speed of semiconductor integrated circuits increase, silicon validation becomes important. In this research, we developed new post-silicon repair & revision techniques to reduce cost and time-to-market. Spare cells are fabricated with the original design and are used for repair when necessary. The interconnections are modified by repair layer revision. The repair cost can be reduced by logic partitioning. Experimental results show that these techniques are effective for low-cost and fast turnaround repair.