Patent ID: 7679978

Claim:
An apparatus for effectively screening a weak cell in a circuit, the apparatus comprising: a leakage stress delivery circuitry (LSDC) coupled to a cell, the LSDC comprising a combination of PMOS transistors, NMOS transistors, or PMOS transistors and NMOS transistors, the LSDC controlled by a plurality of stress inducing signals, the LSDC coupled to at least one of a pair of complementary data lines, the complementary data lines further connected to a sense amplifier and a write driver; and an induced leakage adjustment control (ILAC) coupled to the LSDC to control the quantity of the leakage stress applied to the pair of complementary data lines through the LSDC, the ILAC further having a leakage varying circuitry configured to adjust leakage stress control applied to the LSDC, so that the applied leakage stress to the data lines from LSDC is adjusted to allow the sense amplifier to detect and track a desired pass/fail threshold and other process variations of the selected cell, wherein the plurality of stress inducing signals are controlled to apply the appropriate leakage stress through the LSDC to the pair of complementary data lines.