弹性分组环专用集成电路的可测性设计

根据弹性分组环专用集成电路的具体情况,提出了相应的可测性设计(Design for Test-ability,DFT)方案,综合运用了三种DFT技术:扫描链、边界扫描测试和存储器内建自测试。介绍了三种技术的选取理由和原理,对其具体实现过程和结果进行了详细分析。DFT电路的实现大大降低了专用集成电路的测试难度,提高了故障覆盖率。     

Distributed BIST Architecture to Combat Delay Faults

To successfully combat delay faults there is an urgent need for a proper design for testability (DFT). The foundation of any DFT methodology rests on its scan design. This paper describes three versions of a new design of a shift register latch that lend themselves to distributed self-test and delay test. The advantages of this new SRL is faster application of test vectors, higher DC and AC fault coverages, with low performance impact. Adoption of this new DFT methodology brings us closer to the ideal target of one test-per-clock as opposed to one test-per-scan. Operation, cost, and other attributes are studied in detail. Results of adopting one of these SRLs are reported on ten pilot chips.     

RTL DFT Techniques to Enhance Defect Coverage for Functional Test Sequences

Functional test sequences are often used in manufacturing testing to target defects that are not detected by structural test. However, they suffer from low defect coverage since they are mostly derived in practice from existing design-verification test sequences. Therefore, there is a need to increase their effectiveness using design-for-testability (DFT) techniques. We present a DFT method that uses the register-transfer level (RTL) output deviations metric to select observation points for an RTL design and a given functional test sequence. Simulation results for six ITC′99 circuits show that the proposed method outperforms two baseline methods for several gate-level coverage metrics, including stuck-at, transition, bridging, and gate-equivalent fault coverage. Moreover, by inserting a small subset of all possible observation points using the proposed method, significant fault coverage increase is obtained for all benchmark circuits.     

On High-Quality, Low Energy Built-In Self Test Preparation at RT-Level

Test power requirements for complex components are becoming stringent. The purpose of this paper is to reuse a recently proposed RT (Register Transfer) Level test preparation methodology to drive innovative Low-Energy (LE)/Low-Power (LP) BIST solutions for digital SoC (System on a Chip) embedded cores. RTL test generation is carried out through the definition of a reduced set of partially specified input vectors (masks), leading to a high correlation between multiple detection of RTL faults and single detection of likely physical defects. The methodology is referred as masked-based BIST, or m-BIST. BIST quality is evaluated considering three attributes: test effectiveness (TE), test length (TL) and test power (TP). LE BIST sessions are defined as short test sequences leading to high values of RT-level IFMB metrics and low-level Defects Coverage (DC). The energy and power of the BIST sessions, with and without mask forcing, is computed. It is shown that, by forcing vectors with the RTL masks, short BIST sessions, with low energy and with a comparable (or smaller) average power consumption, as compared to pseudo-random test, are derived. The usefulness of the methodology is ascertained using the VeriDOS simulation environment and modules of the CMUDSP and TORCH ITC'99 benchmark circuits.     

Synthesis of Scan Chains for Netlist Descriptions at RT-Level

This paper presents a methodology to insert scan paths in a functional Register Transfer Level (RTL) specification of a design that can exploit existing functional paths between sequential elements in the original circuit for establishing scan chains. The primary objective for RTL scan insertion is to reduce the time taken for DFT, and thus reduce the time to market. Additionally, building scan chains at the functional RT-Level is expected to reduce the total area overhead introduced by full scan without compromising the fault coverage achieved. In addition, it often eliminates the delay associated with the additional multiplexer as a part of a conventional scan-cell in high performance designs. Experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate that the proposed method achieves the above objectives while also achieving higher fault coverages for most of the benchmark circuits considered.     

FAST: An RTL Fault Simulation Framework based on RTL-to-TLM Abstraction

Functional verification techniques based on fault injection and simulation at register-transfer level (RTL) have been largely investigated in the past years. Although they have various advantages such as scalability and simplicity, they commonly suffer from the low speed of the cycle-accurate RTL simulation. On the other hand, Transaction-level modeling (TLM) allows a simulation speed sensibly faster than RTL. This article presents FAST, a framework to accelerate RTL fault simulation through automatic RTL-to-TLM abstraction. FAST abstracts RTL models injected with any RTL fault model into equivalent injected TLM models thus allowing a very fast fault simulation at TLM level. The article also presents FAST-DT, a new bit-accurate data type library integrated in the framework that allows a further improvement of the simulation speed-up. Finally, the article shows how the generated TLM test patterns can be automatically synthesized into RTL test patterns by exploiting the structural information of the RTL model extracted during the abstraction process. Experimental results have been performed on several designs of different size and complexity to show the methodology effectiveness.     

Enhancing reliability of RTL controller-datapath circuits via Invariant-based concurrent test

We present a low-cost concurrent test methodology for enhancing the reliability of RTL controller-datapath circuits, based on the notion of path invariance. The fundamental observation supporting the proposed methodology is that the inherent transparency behavior of RTL components, typically utilized for hierarchical off-line test, renders rich sources of invariance within a circuit. Furthermore, additional sources of invariance are obtained by examining the algorithmic interaction between the controller, and the datapath of the circuit. A judicious selection & combination of modular transparency functions, based on the algorithm implemented by the controller-datapath pair, yields a powerful set of invariant paths in a design. Compliance to the invariant behavior is checked whenever the latter is activated. Thus, such paths enable a simple, yet very efficient concurrent test capability, achieving fault security in excess of 90% while keeping the hardware overhead below 40% on complicated, difficult-to-test, sequential benchmark circuits. By exploiting fine-grained design invariance, the proposed methodology enhances circuit reliability, and contributes a low-cost concurrent test direction, applicable to general RTL circuits.     

BIST TPG for Combinational Cluster Interconnect Testing at Board Level

A novel built-in self-test (BIST) architecture and a test pattern generator (TPG) design methodology to program this architecture are presented for inter-IC interconnects among combinational non-boundary scan ICs (often called cluster-ICs) via IEEE 1149.1 boundary scan architecture (BSA). Due to the expense and complexity of BSA circuitry, cluster-ICs are still widely used in modern circuit boards. Since combinational logic and 3-state cluster nets exist within cluster interconnect, in order to test all detectable faults in inter-IC nets that include cluster-ICs, newly identified TPG requirements are used to guarantee fault coverage during the design of proposed BIST architecture. This architecture contains a two-level C-TPG that generates constrained pseudo-random patterns for boundary scan cells (BSCs) of cluster control cones, a D-TPG that generates patterns for BSCs of cluster data cones, and a look-up table which is programmed to select, for each BSC, a specific C-TPG or D-TPG stage whose content is shifted into that BSC. This test architecture provides a true BIST solution for cluster testing. The proposed methodology generates TPGs that (i) guarantee the avoidance of multi-driver conflicts when testing via BSA, (ii) guarantee the detection of all testable interconnect faults, (iii) have low area overheads, and (iv) have short test lengths.     

A BIST TPG for Low Power Dissipation and High Fault Coverage

This paper presents a low hardware overhead test pattern generator (TPG) for scan-based built-in self-test (BIST) that can reduce switching activity in circuits under test (CUTs) during BIST and also achieve very high fault coverage with reasonable lengths of test sequences. The proposed BIST TPG decreases transitions that occur at scan inputs during scan shift operations and hence reduces switching activity in the CUT. The proposed BIST is comprised of two TPGs: LT-RTPG and 3-weight WRBIST. Test patterns generated by the LT-RTPG detect easy-to-detect faults and test patterns generated by the 3-weight WRBIST detect faults that remain undetected after LT-RTPG patterns are applied. The proposed BIST TPG does not require modification of mission logics, which can lead to performance degradation. Experimental results for ISCAS'89 benchmark circuits demonstrate that the proposed BIST can significantly reduce switching activity during BIST while achieving 100% fault coverage for all ISCAS'89 benchmark circuits. Larger reduction in switching activity is achieved in large circuits. Experimental results also show that the proposed BIST can be implemented with low area overhead.     

TAO: regular expression-based register-transfer level testabilityanalysis and optimization

In this paper, we present testability analysis and optimization (TAO), a novel methodology for register-transfer level (RTL) testability analysis and optimization of RTL controller/data path circuits. Unlike existing high-level testing techniques that cater restrictively to certain classes of circuits or design styles, TAO exploits the algebra of regular expressions to provide a unified framework for handling a wide variety of circuits including application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), application-specific programmable processors (ASPPs), application-specific instruction processors (ASIPs), digital signal processors (DSPs), and microprocessors. We also augment TAO with a design-for-test (DFT) framework that can provide a low-cost testability solution by examining the tradeoffs in choosing from a diverse array of testability modifications like partial scan or test multiplexer insertion in different parts of the circuit. Test generation is symbolic and, hence, independent of bit width. Experimental results on benchmark circuits show that TAO is very efficient, in addition to being comprehensive. The fault coverage obtained is above 99% in all cases. The average area and delay overheads for incorporating testability into the benchmarks are only 3.2% and 1.0%, respectively. The test generation time is two-to-four orders of magnitude smaller than that associated with gate-level sequential test generators, while the test application times are comparable     

A New Built-in TPG Based on Berlekamp–Massey Algorithm

In this work, a new method to design a mixed-mode Test Pattern Generator (TPG) based only on a simple and single Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) is described. Such an LFSR is synthesized by Berlekamp–Massey algorithm (BMA) and is capable of generating pre-computed deterministic test patterns which detect the hard-to-detect faults of the circuit. Moreover, the LFSR generates residual patterns which are sufficient to detect the remaining easy-to-detect faults. In this way, the BMA-designed LFSR is a mixed-mode TPG which achieves total fault coverage with short testing length and low hardware overhead compared with previous schemes according to the experimental results.     

LFSR-Based Deterministic TPG for Two-Pattern Testing

This paper proposes an approach to designing a cost-effective deterministic test pattern generator (TPG) for two-pattern testing. Given a set of pre-generated test-pair set (obtained by an ATPG tool) with a pre-determined (path delay) fault coverage, a simple TPG is synthesized to apply the given test-pair set in a minimal test time. To achieve this objective, a configurable linear feedback shift register (CLFSR) structure is used. Techniques are developed to synthesize such a TPG, which is used to generate an unordered deterministic test-pair set. The resulting TPG is efficient in terms of hardware size and speed performance. Experiments on benchmark circuits indicate that TPG designed using the proposed procedure obtain high path delay fault coverage in short test length.     

SOC芯片的可测试性设计与功耗优化

介绍了数字集成电路可测试性设计与测试覆盖率的概念,针对一款电力网通信芯片完成了可测试性设计,从测试的覆盖率、功耗等方面提出了优化改进方案,切实提高了芯片的测试覆盖率,缩减了测试时间和成本,降低了测试功耗,同时保证了芯片测试的可靠性,最终使芯片顺利通过量产测试。     

数字集成电路故障测试策略和技术的研究进展

IC制造工艺的发展，持续增加着VLSI电路的集成密度，亦日益加大了电路故障测试的复杂性和困难度。作者在承担相应研究课题的基础上，综述了常规通用测试方法和技术，并分析了其局限性。详细叙述了边界扫描测试(BST)标准、可测性设计(DFT)思想和内建自测试(BIST)策略。针对片上系统(SoC)和深亚微米(VDSM)技术给故障测试带来的新挑战，本文进行了初步的论述和探讨。     

RTL Test Justification and Propagation Analysis for Modular Designs

Modular decomposition and functional abstraction are commonly employed to accommodate the growing size and complexity of modern designs. In the test domain, a divide-and-conquer type of approach is utilized, wherein test is locally generated for each module and consequently translated to global design test. We present an RTL analysis methodology that identifies the test justification and propagation bottlenecks, facilitating a judicious DFT insertion process. We introduce two mechanisms for capturing, without reasoning on the complete functional space, data and control module behavior related to test translation. A traversal algorithm that identifies the test translation bottlenecks in the design is described. The algorithm is capable of handling cyclic behavior, reconvergence and variable bit-widths in an efficient manner. We demonstrate our scheme on representative examples, unveiling its potential of accurately identifying and consequently minimizing the reported controllability and observability bottlenecks of large, modular designs.     

基于低功耗及加权优化的BIST测试生成器设计实现

测试生成器TPG（Tesl Panern Generation）的构造是BIST（Built—In Self-Test）测试策略的重要组成部分。文章结合加权伪随机测试原理及低功耗设计技术，提出了一种基于低功耗及加权优化的BIST测试生成器设计方案。它根据被测电路CUT（Circuit Under Test）各主输入端口权值构造TPG，在对测试序列优化的同时达到降低功耗的目的。仿真结果验证了该方案的可行性。     

Fast Enhancement of Validation Test Sets for Improving the Stuck-at Fault Coverage of RTL Circuits

A digital circuit usually comprises a controller and datapath. The time spent for determining a valid controller behavior to detect a fault usually dominates test generation time. A validation test set is used to verify controller behavior and, hence, it activates various controller behaviors. In this paper, we present a novel methodology wherein the controller behaviors exercised by test sequences in a validation test set are reused for detecting faults in the datapath. A heuristic is used to identify controller behaviors that can justify/propagate pre-computed test vectors/responses of datapath register-transfer level (RTL) modules. Such controller behaviors are said to be compatible with the corresponding precomputed test vectors/responses. The heuristic is fairly accurate, resulting in the detection of a majority of stuck-at faults in the datapath RTL modules. Also, since test generation is performed at the RTL and the controller behavior is predetermined, test generation time is reduced. For microprocessors, if the validation test set consists of instruction sequences then the proposed methodology also generates instruction-level test sequences.     

基于扫描链结构重组的低功耗BIST方案

设计了一种改进扫描链结构的内建自测试(BIST)方案.该方案将设计测试序列发生器(TPG)中合适的n状态平滑器与扫描链的重新排序结合起来,从而达到低功耗测试且不致丢失故障覆盖率的目的.通过对15位随机序列信号的测试,发现此TPG中的n状态平滑器在降低功耗的同时还减小了故障覆盖率,遂又设计了重组扫描链的结构来解决这一问题.实验结果表明,该设计方案对于降低平均测试功耗和提高故障覆盖率都具有显著的效果.