ProTaR: An infrastructure IP for repairing RAMs in system-on-chips

Complex system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs usually consist of many memory cores. Efficient yield-enhancement techniques thus are required for the memory cores in SOCs. This paper presents an infrastructure intelligent property (IIP) for testing, diagnosing, and repairing multiple memory cores in SOCs. The proposed IIP can perform parallel testing for multiple memories, and serial diagnosis or repair for one memory each time. In the repair mode, the proposed IIP can execute various redundancy analysis algorithms. Therefore, the user can select a better redundancy analysis algorithm for each memory core being tested according to its redundancy structure. Simulation results show that the proposed IIP needs less test time and redundancy analysis time than the processor-based built-in self-repair scheme. We also have realized the proposed IIP for four types of memories - two 8 K × 64 bit SRAMs, one 4 K × 16 bit SRAM, and one 2 K × 32 bit SRAM - based on TSMC 0.18-μm standard cell technology. Simulation results show that the area overhead of the IIP is only about 4.6%.