Introducing IC reliability elements in digital circuits and systems design education

With the latest advances in technology scaling, reliability of IC design has emerged as an issue of significant concern in the VLSI design community. Reliability is a global concept that needs to be challenged with a system-level approach: all disciplines in circuit and systems education are steadily introducing reliability aspects in their coursework. Still, engineers need to be educated to a holistic view that must include in one context all different aspects of a digital system (analog / digital / packaging / board / software). This work describes an attempt at increasing the coverage and efficacy of this specific learning outcome in digital design courses, introducing a new tool and a new set of lab assignments on top of “standard” digital design flows introduced in previous offerings.