Testing and Fault Tolerance Techniques for CNT-Based FPGAs

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Lu, Siyuan, Xu, Kangwei, Xie, Peng, Wang, Rui, Cheng, Yuanqing
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866911163138179072
author Lu, Siyuan
Xu, Kangwei
Xie, Peng
Wang, Rui
Cheng, Yuanqing
author_facet Lu, Siyuan
Xu, Kangwei
Xie, Peng
Wang, Rui
Cheng, Yuanqing
contents As the semiconductor manufacturing process technology node shrinks into the nanometer-scale, the CMOS-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) face big challenges in scalability of performance and power consumption. Multi-walled Carbon Nanotube (MWCNT) serves as a promising candidate for Cu interconnects thanks to the superior conductivity. Moreover, Carbon Nanotube Field Transistor (CNFET) also emerges as a prospective alternative to the conventional CMOS device because of high power efficiency and large noise margin. The combination of MWCNT and CNFET enables the promising CNT-based FPGAs. However, the MWCNT interconnects exhibit significant process variations due to immature fabrication process, leading to delay faults. Also, the non-ideal CNFET fabrication process may generate a few metallic CNTs (m-CNTs), rendering correlated faulty blocks. In this article, we propose a ring oscillator (RO) based testing technique to detect delay faults due to the process variation of MWCNT interconnects. Furthermore, we propose an effective testing technique for the carry chains in CLBs, and an improved circuit design based on the lookup table (LUT) is applied to speed up the fault testing of CNT-based FPGAs. In addition, we propose a testing algorithm to detect m-CNTs in CLBs. Finally, we propose a redundant spare row sharing architecture to improve the yield of CNT-based FPGA further. Experimental results show that the test time for a 6-input LUT can be reduced by 35.49% compared with conventional testing, and the proposed algorithm can achieve a high test coverage with little overhead. The proposed redundant architecture can repair the faulty segment effectively and efficiently.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20304
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Testing and Fault Tolerance Techniques for CNT-Based FPGAs
Lu, Siyuan
Xu, Kangwei
Xie, Peng
Wang, Rui
Cheng, Yuanqing
Hardware Architecture
Systems and Control
As the semiconductor manufacturing process technology node shrinks into the nanometer-scale, the CMOS-based Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) face big challenges in scalability of performance and power consumption. Multi-walled Carbon Nanotube (MWCNT) serves as a promising candidate for Cu interconnects thanks to the superior conductivity. Moreover, Carbon Nanotube Field Transistor (CNFET) also emerges as a prospective alternative to the conventional CMOS device because of high power efficiency and large noise margin. The combination of MWCNT and CNFET enables the promising CNT-based FPGAs. However, the MWCNT interconnects exhibit significant process variations due to immature fabrication process, leading to delay faults. Also, the non-ideal CNFET fabrication process may generate a few metallic CNTs (m-CNTs), rendering correlated faulty blocks. In this article, we propose a ring oscillator (RO) based testing technique to detect delay faults due to the process variation of MWCNT interconnects. Furthermore, we propose an effective testing technique for the carry chains in CLBs, and an improved circuit design based on the lookup table (LUT) is applied to speed up the fault testing of CNT-based FPGAs. In addition, we propose a testing algorithm to detect m-CNTs in CLBs. Finally, we propose a redundant spare row sharing architecture to improve the yield of CNT-based FPGA further. Experimental results show that the test time for a 6-input LUT can be reduced by 35.49% compared with conventional testing, and the proposed algorithm can achieve a high test coverage with little overhead. The proposed redundant architecture can repair the faulty segment effectively and efficiently.
title Testing and Fault Tolerance Techniques for CNT-Based FPGAs
topic Hardware Architecture
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20304