This paper presents a new test data compression/decompression method for SoC testing,called hybrid run length codes. The method makes a full analysis of the factors which influence test parameters:compression ratio,test application time, and area overhead. To improve the compression ratio, the new method is based on variable-to-variable run length codes,and a novel algorithm is proposed to reorder the test vectors and fill the unspecified bits in the pre-processing step. With a novel on-chip decoder, low test application time and low area overhead are obtained by hybrid run length codes. Finally, an experimental comparison on ISCAS 89 benchmark circuits validates the proposed method
The hot-carrier degradation for 90 nm gate length lightly-doped drain (LDD) NMOSFET with ultra-thin (1.4 nm) gate oxide under the low gate voltage (LGV) (at Vg = Vth, where Yth is the threshold voltage) stress has been investigated. It is found that the drain current decreases and the threshold voltage increases after the LGV (Vg = Vth) stress. The results are opposite to the degradation phenomena of conventional NMOSFET for the case of this stress. By analysing the gate-induced drain leakage (GIDL) current before and after stresses, it is confirmed that under the LGV stress in ultra-short gate LDD-NMOSFET with ultra-thin gate oxide, the hot holes are trapped at interface in the LDD region and cannot shorten the channel to mask the influence of interface states as those in conventional NMOSFET do, which leads to the different degradation phenomena from those of the conventional NMOS devices. This paper also discusses the degradation in the 90 nm gate length LDD-NMOSFET with 1.4 nm gate oxide under the LGV stress at Yg = Yth with various drain biases. Experimental results show that the degradation slopes (n) range from 0.21 to 0.41. The value of n is less than that of conventional MOSFET (0.5 - 0.6) and also that of the long gate length LDD MOSFET (- 0.8).