Embedded memory is extensively being used in SoCs, and is rapidly growing in size and density. To keep up with the development pace of nanoscale devices, enhancement methods for yield and reliability must overcome the barriers set forth by advent of new technology. To address the issue of reliability, periodic online field test and repair are implemented by using synergistic approach of employing redundancy and ECC to repair or correct both hard errors and soft errors. In this paper, an online remap strategy for memory repair, which ensures 'fresh' memory words are always used until the spare words run out, is proposed. The improvement of reliability for memory architectures and the area overhead introduced by the proposed scheme is evaluated.
SUMMARY Embedded memory is extensively being used in SoCs, and is rapidly growing in size and density. It contributes to SoCs to have greater features, but at the expense of taking up the most area. Due to continuous scaling of nanoscale device technology, large area size memory introduces aging-induced faults and soft errors, which affects reliability. In-field test and repair, as well as ECC, can be used to maintain reliability, and recently, these methods are used together to form a combined approach, wherein uncorrectable words are repaired, while correctable words are left to the ECC. In this paper, we propose a novel in-field repair strategy that repairs uncorrectable words, and possibly correctable words, for an ECC-based memory architecture. It executes an adaptive reconfiguration method that ensures 'fresh' memory words are always used until spare words run out. Experimental results demonstrate that our strategy enhances reliability, and the area overhead contribution is small. key words: memory repair, memory reliability, in-field test and repair, ECC, in-field repair strategy, remapping
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.