Hardware defects in integrated circuit chips

The hardware defects of integrated circuit chips usually refer to the physical imperfections exhibited by the chips. Integrated circuit fault refers to a circuit logic functional error or abnormal circuit operation caused by an integrated circuit defect. The common factors that cause failures in integrated circuit chips include rapid performance degradation due to changes in component parameters, poor component contact, signal line failures, and equipment malfunction due to harsh working environments. Circuit faults can be divided into hard faults and soft faults. Soft faults are temporary and will not cause permanent damage to the chip circuit. It usually appears randomly, causing the chip to sometimes work normally and sometimes exhibit abnormalities. When dealing with such faults, simply reconfigure the system with the same configuration parameters when the fault occurs, and the equipment can be restored to normal. The damage caused by hard faults to the circuit is permanent and cannot be self restored without maintenance.
There are usually three modules required for fault detection in integrated circuit chips: source excitation module, observation information acquisition module, and detection module. The source excitation module is used to transmit test vectors to the integrated circuit chip to drive the chip into various working modes. Usually, it is required that the test vector set should contain as many possible input vectors as possible. The observation information collection module is responsible for collecting information for subsequent analysis and processing. The selection of observation information is crucial for fault detection, as it should include as much fault feature information as possible and be easy to collect. The detection module is responsible for analyzing and processing the collected observation information, identifying the fault features hidden in the observation information, and diagnosing the pattern of circuit faults.