ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses yield loss mechanisms, yield analysis and common physical design methods to improve yield. Yield optimization methods work with the measure, model, and mitigate flow. Root cause analysis of failures is a necessary component of the yield improvement and process ramp-up process. Yield prediction requires modeling of various complicated physical and statistical phenomena. The yield analysis problem can be decomposed into the analysis of parametric and catastrophic failures. The analysis of chip failures and consequent yield loss is an active area of research, and there is little consensus on yield metrics and calculation methods in process-variability regime. The extraction of critical area for various types of faults poses the major computational bottleneck in very large scale integration random yield prediction. Back-end-of-the-line yield and manufacturability optimization is a complicated task. Redundant via insertion provides another effective way of increasing design reliability and yield.
