Should Yield be a Design Objective?

The obje tives of good hip design have traditionally in luded issues like performan e, power and reliability. Yield is rarely onsidered during the design pro ess, ex ept in the design of memory ICs, where spe i defe t-toleran e te hniques are in orporated into the ar hite ture for yield enhan ement. In order to make the ase for establishing yield as another design obje tive we must rst prove that a hip's yield an not only be a e ted, but onsistently improved, by de isions made during the design proess.