Basel Halak - Ageing of Integrated Circuits: Causes, Effects and Mitigation Techniques

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The ageing of an organism in biology is defined as a progressive, irreversible process that inevitably ends with death. The maximal lifetime of an individual is significantly affected by ageing. The same is true for integrated circuits wherein ageing can be caused by several physical mechanisms, including bias temperature instability (BTI), hot carrier injection (HCI), and time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB).

Ageing effects lead to a degradation in the performance and reliability of an electronic system, hence limiting its expected lifetime.

Variation-aware design techniques, such as conservative safety margins, can be used to reduce the impact of ageing on system reliability; however, the applications of such methods make it harder to develop competitive products and may lead to the elimination of performance gains of technology scaling. Therefore, there is a need for innovative approaches to improve the resilience of integrated circuit to ageing-induced failure without affecting its performance.

The prime objective of this book is to provide a timely and coherent account of the latest advances in the key research areas of ICs ageing; it has been developed as a collaborative effort among several international research groups, each providing an up-to-date summary of their latest findings and highlighting the remaining challenges and research opportunities. To facilitate the understanding of the material, each chapter includes a background section explaining related terminologies and principles, in addition to a comprehensive list of relevant references. The book is divided into three parts to enhance its readability, namely, physical mechanisms, mitigation techniques, and monitoring and adaptation approaches.

This book explains the physical mechanism causing the ageing of integrated circuits, including a comprehensive analysis of its effects on the performance and reliability of integrated circuits. Afterwards, the book presents a number of mitigation techniques that can be applied at different stages of the life cycle of silicon chips. At the design stage, the book presents a synthesis algorithm that help produce ageing-resilient digital systems; in addition, it explores a number of application-dependent methods to improve system reliability. The book also discusses the state-of-the-art approaches for predicting ageing-induced failures and associated design adaptation techniques. More details on each chapter are provided below:

The book is intended to provide a comprehensive coverage of the latest research advances in the key research areas of integrated circuits ageing; this makes it a valuable resource for graduate students, researchers, and engineers working in these areas. I hope this book will complement the ongoing research and teaching activities in this field.

I would like to thank all of those who contributed to the emergence, creation, and correction of this book. First, I would like to thank my colleagues who have contributed chapters to this manuscript for taking the time to share their knowledge and for being very accommodating throughout the publication process. Special thanks go to the graduate students at Southampton, Grenoble, and Ioannina Universities for the many hours they have spent working in their labs to generate the experimental results. Of course, the book would not be successful without the contributions of many researches and expert in field of CMOS ageing.