Instant Test and Repair for TSVs using Differential Signaling

Abstract

A faulty Through Silicon Via (TSV) could spoil a 3D IC and cause hefty loss as the potentially expensive known-good-dies bonded together must be discarded. This work presents a Fault-tolerant TSV scheme to avoid such a disastrous situation. Our method uses two differential TSVs for each binary signal to be transmitted. Compared to the previous Fault-tolerant TSV schemes, our test and repair scheme is not only instant and much more simplified, requiring no global test result analysis and complex reconfiguration process, thereby making it especially suitable for some situations when the more involved TSV test and repair schemes cannot be easily supported by some die providers in multi-vendor 3D-IC design environment.