Diagnosis of MRAM Write Disturbance Fault

Author

Su, Chin-Lung ; Tsai, Chih-Wea ; Chen, Ching-Yi ; Lo, Wan-Yu ; Wu, Cheng-Wen ; Chen, Ji-Jan ; Wu, Wen-Ching ; Hung, Chien-Chung ; Kao, Ming-Jer

Author_Institution

R&D Dept., Skymedi Corp., Hsinchu, Taiwan

Volume

18

Issue

12

fYear

2010

Firstpage

1762

Lastpage

1766

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new test method to detect write disturbance fault (WDF) for magnetic RAM (MRAM). Furthermore, an adaptive diagnosis algorithm (ADA) is also introduced to identify and diagnose the WDF for MRAM. The proposed test method can evaluate process stability and uniformity. We also develop a built-in self-test (BIST) circuit that supports the proposed WDF diagnosis test method. A 1-Mb toggle MRAM prototype chip with the proposed BIST circuit has been designed and fabricated using a special 0.15-μm CMOS technology. The BIST circuit overhead is only about 0.05% with respect to the 1-Mb MRAM. The test time is reduced by about 30% as compared with the test method without using the decision write mechanism. The chip measurement results show the efficiency of our proposed method.

Keywords

CMOS digital integrated circuits; built-in self test; fault diagnosis; magnetic storage; random-access storage; CMOS technology; MRAM write disturbance fault; adaptive diagnosis algorithm; built-in self-test circuit; chip measurement; magnetic RAM; memory size 1 MByte; process stability; size 0.15 mum; Automatic testing; Built-in self-test; CMOS technology; Circuit faults; Circuit stability; Circuit testing; Fault detection; Fault diagnosis; Prototypes; Semiconductor device measurement; Fault diagnosis; magnetic RAM (MRAM); memory testing; nonvolatile memory; write disturbance fault (WDF);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1063-8210

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TVLSI.2009.2026905

Filename

5229479