Investigating the Use of BICS to detect resistive-open defects in SRAMs

Technology scaling has changed the Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) test scenario, leading to an insufficiency of the usually adopted functional fault models. In this sense, these fault models are no longer able to correctly reproduce the effects caused by some defects generated during the manufacturing process. In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using Built-In Current Sensors (BICSs) to detect static faults associated to resistive-open defects in SRAMs. Experimental results obtained throughout electrical simulations demonstrate the BICSs' capability to detect the considered faults, while resulting in negligible degradation on the SRAM access time.