
Speed grading has becoming more and more important for nanometer technologies to support activities like process monitoring or performance diagnosis. In this work, we analyze the feasibility of providing such a capability through on-chip circuitry. This Built-in Speed Grading (BISG) methodology uses an All-Digital Phase-Locked Loop (ADPLL) as the programmable clock generator to provide various clock signals within a specific frequency range. The maximum operating speed of a circuit can thus be easily tracked down using a binary search process with multiple runs of built-in self-test. To accommodate larger process variation, we further explore a so-called binary-neighborhood-linear frequency-locking scheme for the underlying ADPLL, and thereby resulting in a higher accuracy. Experimental results show that only 2289 gates are adequate to provide this valuable infrastructure that may find numerous applications in IC testing and diagnostics.
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