Built-In Self Test and Self-Repairing Circuit for Array Multipliers

Background/Objectives: As the size of the chip reduces, nanoscale devices have become more susceptible to manufacturing faults, interference from radiations and transient faults. Many of these errors are not permanent but it causes malfunctioning of circuit either due to the complexity of the circuit or due to the interaction with the software. In this paper, an area and power efficient BIST with self repairing technique has been proposed, which detect and repair the faults in the circuit. Methods/Statistical Analysis: In this research work, a novel Built-In Self-Test (BIST) architecture with self repairing circuit is proposed. The novelty of this architecture is that testing is done along with the self repairing. The Self repairing circuit repairs the fault in the circuit during testing phase itself which increases the reliability of the circuit. Since the insertion of test pattern externally, BIST architecture does not alter the basic multiplier structure. Findings: Average power dissipation of the proposed Built-in self test and self repairing of array multiplier architecture is reduced by 36% since the use of a power efficient test pattern generator. Self repairing has been accomplished by the use of hardware redundancy technique. Also a TMR based self repairing architecture for real time self repairing has been proposed and its area and power dissipation is compared with the other self repairing architecture. Result shows that the BIST with repairing technique is good for low power applications while the TMR based self repairing method is good for real time self repairing applications. The proposed technique can be extended to self repairing processor.