Deterministic Test Vector Compression/Decompression for Systems-on-a-Chip Using an Embedded Processor

A novel approach for using an embedded processor to aid in deterministic testing of the other components of a system-on-a-chip (SOC) is presented. The tester loads a program along with compressed test data into the processor's on-chip memory. The processor executes the program which decompresses the test data and applies it to scan chains in the other components of the SOC to test them. The program itself is very simple and compact, and the decompression is done very rapidly, hence this approach reduces both the amount of data that must be stored on the tester and reduces the test time. Moreover, it enables at-speed scan shifting even with a slow tester (i.e., a tester whose maximum clock rate is slower than the SOC's normal operating clock rate). A procedure is described for converting a set of test cubes (i.e., test vectors where the unspecified inputs are left as X's) into a compressed form. A program that can be run on an embedded processor is then given for decompressing the test cubes and applying them to scan chains on the chip. Experimental results indicate a significant amount of compression can be achieved resulting in less data that must be stored on the tester (i.e., smaller tester memory requirement) and less time to transfer the test data from the tester to the chip.     

On Using Exponential-Golomb Codes and Subexponential Codes for System-on-a-Chip Test Data Compression

We examine the use of exponential-Golomb codes and subexponential codes can be used for the compression of scan test data in core-based system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs. These codes are well-known in the data compression domain but their application to SOC testing has not been explored before. We show that these codes often provide slighly higher compression than alternative methods that have been proposed recently.     

Test data compression using alternating variable run-length code

This paper presents a unified test data compression approach, which simultaneously reduces test data volume, scan power consumption and test application time for a system-on-a-chip (SoC). The proposed approach is based on the use of alternating variable run-length (AVR) codes for test data compression. A formal analysis of scan power consumption and test application time is presented. The analysis showed that a careful mapping of the don’t-cares in pre-computed test sets to 1s and 0s led to significant savings in peak and average power consumption, without requiring slower scan clocks. The proposed technique also reduced testing time compared to a conventional scan-based scheme. The alternating variable run-length codes can efficiently compress the data streams that are composed of both runs 0s and 1s. The decompression architecture was also presented in this paper. Experimental results for ISCAS'89 benchmark circuits and a production circuit showed that the proposed approach greatly reduced test data volume and scan power consumption for all cases.     

Optimal Selective Count Compatible Runlength Encoding for SOC Test Data Compression

Test data volume amount is increased multi-fold due to the need of quality assurance of various parts of the circuit design at deep submicron level. Huge memory is required to store this enormous test data which not only increases the cost of the ATE but also the test application time. This paper presents an optimal selective count compatible run length (OSCCPRL) encoding scheme for achieving maximum compression for reduction of the test cost. OSCCPRL is a hybrid technique that amalgamates the benefits of other two techniques: 10 Coded run length (10 C) and Selective CCPRL (SCCPRL) proposed here. These techniques work on improvement of the 9 C and CCPRL techniques. In OSCCPRL, entire data is segmented in blocks and further compressed using inter block and intra block level merging techniques. SCCPRL technique is used for encoding the compatible blocks while the 10C is used to do encoding at sub block (half block length) level. In case, if no compatibility is found at block/sub block level then the unique pattern is held as such in the encoded data along with the necessary categorization bits. The decompression architecture is described and it is shown how by just the addition of few states of FSM, better test data compression can be achieved as compared to previous schemes. The simulation results performed for various ISCAS benchmarks circuits prove that the proposed OSCCPRL technique provides an average compression efficiency of around 80 %.     

一种基于编码的低硬件开销的测试数据压缩方法

提出了一种新的测试数据压缩/解压缩的算法,称为混合游程编码,它充分考虑了测试数据的压缩率、相应硬件解码电路的开销以及总的测试时间.该算法是基于变长-变长的编码方式,即把不同游程长度的字串映射成不同长度的代码字,可以得到一个很好的压缩率.同时为了进一步提高压缩率,还提出了一种不确定位填充方法和测试向量的排序算法,在编码压缩前对测试数据进行相应的预处理.另外,混合游程编码的研究过程中充分考虑到了硬件解码电路的设计,可以使硬件开销尽可能小,并减少总的测试时间.最后,ISCAS 89 benchmark电路的实验结果证明了所提算法的有效性.     

An Efficient Test Data Compression Technique Based on Codes

提出了一种新的测试数据压缩/解压缩的算法,称为混合游程编码,它充分考虑了测试数据的压缩率、相应硬件解码电路的开销以及总的测试时间.该算法是基于变长-变长的编码方式,即把不同游程长度的字串映射成不同长度的代码字,可以得到一个很好的压缩率.同时为了进一步提高压缩率,还提出了一种不确定位填充方法和测试向量的排序算法,在编码压缩前对测试数据进行相应的预处理.另外,混合游程编码的研究过程中充分考虑到了硬件解码电路的设计,可以使硬件开销尽可能小,并减少总的测试时间.最后,ISCAS 89 benchmark电路的实验结果证明了所提算法的有效性.     

Diagnostic Data Compression Techniques for Embedded Memories with Built-In Self-Test

A system-on-chip (SOC) usually consists of many memory cores with different sizes and functionality, and they typically represent a significant portion of the SOC and therefore dominate its yield. Diagnostics for yield enhancement of the memory cores thus is a very important issue. In this paper we present two data compression techniques that can be used to speed up the transmission of diagnostic data from the embedded RAM built-in self-test (BIST) circuit that has diagnostic support to the external tester. The proposed syndrome-accumulation approach compresses the faulty-cell address and March syndrome to about 28% of the original size on average under the March-17N diagnostic test algorithm. The key component of the compressor is a novel syndrome-accumulation circuit, which can be realized by a content-addressable memory. Experimental results show that the area overhead is about 0.9% for a 1Mb SRAM with 164 faults. A tree-based compression technique for word-oriented memories is also presented. By using a simplified Huffman coding scheme and partitioning each 256-bit Hamming syndrome into fixed-size symbols, the average compression ratio (size of original data to that of compressed data) is about 10, assuming 16-bit symbols. Also, the additional hardware to implement the tree-based compressor is very small. The proposed compression techniques effectively reduce the memory diagnosis time as well as the tester storage requirement.     

一种基于变长数据块相关性统计的测试数据压缩和解压方法

为了解决系统芯片(SoC)测试过程中自动测试设备(ATE)在存储空间以及带宽等方面所面临的问题,本文提出了一种新的基于变长数据块相关性统计的测试数据压缩和解压方法.以测试向量为单位,先用算法确定一个具有最好相关性的数据块作为该向量的参考数据块,再利用它与该向量中数据块的相关性进行压缩.且每个向量的参考数据块长度相互独立.其解压结构只需要一个有限状态机(FSM)、一个5位暂存器和一个与参考数据块等长的循环扫描移位寄存器(CSR)即可,硬件开销小,对ISCAS-89标准电路Mintest集的压缩结果表明,本文提出方案较同类编码方法有更高的压缩效率.     

A Test Time Reduction Algorithm for Test Architecture Design for Core-Based System Chips

This paper deals with the design of SOC test architectures which are efficient with respect to required ATE vector memory depth and test application time. We advocate the usage of a TestRail Architecture, as this architecture, unlike others, allows not only for efficient core-internal testing, but also for efficient testing of the circuitry external to the cores. We present a novel heuristic algorithm that effectively optimizes the TestRail Architecture for a given SOC by efficiently determining the number of TestRails and their widths, the assignment of cores to the TestRails, and the wrapper design per core. Experimental results for four benchmark SOCs show that, compared to previously published algorithms, we obtain comparable or better test times at negligible compute time.     

采用字典词条衍生模式的测试数据压缩

为了降低数字集成电路测试成本,压缩预先计算的测试集是一种有效的解决途径。该文根据索引位数远少于字典词条,以及测试数据中存在大量无关位,提出一种采用词条衍生和二级编码的字典压缩方案。该方案引入循环移位操作,确保无关位按序任意移动而不丢失,从而扩大词条衍生性能,减少非词条向量个数。另外,采用规则的两级编码可以减少码字数量和解压电路的复杂度。实验结果表明该文所提方案能够进一步提高测试数据压缩率,减少测试时间。     

Efficient Test Compression Technique for SoC Based on Block Merging and Eight Coding

Growing test data volume and excessive test application time are two serious concerns in scan-based testing for SoCs. This paper presents an efficient test-independent compression technique based on block merging and eight coding (BM-8C) to reduce the test data volume and test application time. Test compression is achieved by encoding the merged blocks after merging consecutive compatible blocks with exact eight codewords. The proposed scheme compresses the pre-computed test data without requiring any structural information of the circuit under test. Therefore, it is applicable for IP cores in SoCs. Experimental results demonstrate that the BM-8C technique can achieve an average compression ratio up to 68.14 % with significant low test application time.     

SOC test planning using virtual test access architectures

Recent advances in tester technology have led to automatic test equipment (ATE) that can operate at up to gigahertz speeds. However, system-on-chip (SOC) scan chains are typically run at lower frequencies, e.g., 10-50 MHz. The use of high-speed ATE channels to drive slower scan chains leads to an underutilization of resources, thereby resulting in an increase in SOC testing time. We present a new test planning technique to reduce the testing time and test cost by matching high-speed ATE channels to slower scan chains using the concept of virtual test access architectures. We also present a new test access mechanism (TAM) optimization framework based on Lagrange multipliers and analyze the impact of virtual TAMs on the overall SOC test power consumption for one of the ITC'02 benchmarks. Experimental results for TAM optimization based on Lagrange multipliers and virtual TAMs are presented for three industrial circuits from the set of ITC'02 SOC test benchmarks.     

应用混合游程编码的SOC测试数据压缩方法

本文提出了一种有效的基于游程编码的测试数据压缩/解压缩的算法:混合游程编码,它具有压缩率高和相应解码电路硬件开销小的突出特点.另外,由于编码算法的压缩率和测试数据中不确定位的填充策略有很大的关系,所以为了进一步提高测试压缩编码效率,本文还提出一种不确定位的迭代排序填充算法.理论分析和对部分ISCAS 89 benchmark电路的实验结果证明了混合游程编码和迭代排序填充算法的有效性.     

基于变游程编码的测试数据压缩算法

基于IP核的设计思想推动了SOC设计技术的发展,却使SOC的测试数据成几何级数增长.针对这一问题,本文提出了一种有效的测试数据压缩算法——变游程(Variable-Run-Length)编码算法来减少测试数据量、降低测试成本.该算法编码时同时考虑游程0和游程1两种游程,大大减小了测试数据中长度较短游程的数量,提高了编码效率.理论分析和实验数据表明,变游程编码能取得较同类编码算法更高的压缩效率,能够显著减少测试时间、降低测试功耗和测试成本.     

Test Data Compression Using Selective Encoding of Scan Slices

We present a selective encoding method that reduces test data volume and test application time for scan testing of Intellectual Property (IP) cores. This method encodes the slices of test data that are fed to the scan chains in every clock cycle. To drive $N$ scan chains, we use only $c$ tester channels, where $c=lceillog_2(N+1)rceil+2$ . In the best case, we can achieve compression by a factor of $N/c$ using only one tester clock cycle per slice. We derive a sufficient condition on the distribution of care bits that allows us to achieve the best-case compression. We also derive a probabilistic lower bound on the compression for a given care-bit density. Unlike popular compression methods such as Embedded Deterministic Test (EDT), the proposed approach is suitable for IP cores because it does not require structural information for fault simulation, dynamic compaction, or interleaved test generation. The on-chip decoder is small, independent of the circuit under test and the test set, and it can be shared between different circuits. We present compression results for a number of industrial circuits and compare our results to other recent compression methods targeted at IP cores.      

Efficient Test Data Compression and Low Power Scan Testing in SoCs

Testing time and power consumption during the testing of SoCs are becoming increasingly important with an increasing volume of test data in intellectual property cores in SoCs. This paper presents a new algorithm to reduce the scan‐in power and test data volume using a modified scan latch reordering algorithm. We apply a scan latch reordering technique to minimize the column hamming distance in scan vectors. During scan latch reordering, the don't‐care inputs in the scan vectors are assigned for low power and high compression. Experimental results for ISCAS 89 benchmark circuits show that reduced test data and low power scan testing can be achieved in all cases.     

A Novel Variable Shifting Code for Test Compression of SoC

The test vector compression is a key technique to reduce IC test time and cost since the explosion of the test data of system on chip （SoC） in recent years. To reduce the bandwidth requirement between the automatic test equipment （ATE） and the CUT （circuit under test） effectively, a novel VSPTIDR （variable shifting prefix-tail identifier reverse） code for test stimulus data compression is designed. The encoding scheme is defined and analyzed in detail, and the decoder is presented and discussed. While the probability of 0 bits in the test set is greater than 0.92, the compression ratio from VSPTIDR code is better than the frequency-directed run-length （FDR） code, which can be proved by theoretical analysis and experiments. And the on-chip area overhead of VSPTIDR decoder is about 15.75 % less than the FDR decoder.     

Test Wrapper and Test Access Mechanism Co-Optimization for System-on-Chip

Test access mechanisms (TAMs) and test wrappers are integral parts of a system-on-chip (SOC) test architecture. Prior research has concentrated on only one aspect of the TAM/wrapper design problem at a time, i.e., either optimizing the TAMs for a set of pre-designed wrappers, or optimizing the wrapper for a given TAM width. In this paper, we address a more general problem, that of carrying out TAM design and wrapper optimization in conjunction. We present an efficient algorithm to construct wrappers that reduce the testing time for cores. Our wrapper design algorithm improves on earlier approaches by also reducing the TAM width required to achieve these lower testing times. We present new mathematical models for TAM optimization that use the core testing time values calculated by our wrapper design algorithm. We further present a new enumerative method for TAM optimization that reduces execution time significantly when the number of TAMs being designed is small. Experimental results are presented for an academic SOC as well as an industrial SOC.     

一种低功耗双重测试数据压缩方案

随着集成电路制造工艺的发展,VLSI（Very Large Scale Integrated）电路测试面临着测试数据量大和测试功耗过高的问题.对此,本文提出一种基于多级压缩的低功耗测试数据压缩方案.该方案先利用输入精简技术对原测试集进行预处理,以减少测试集中的确定位数量,之后再进行第一级压缩,即对测试向量按多扫描划分为子向量并进行相容压缩,压缩后的测试向量可用更短的码字表示;接着再对测试数据进行低功耗填充,先进行捕获功耗填充,使其达到安全阈值以内,然后再对剩余的无关位进行移位功耗填充;最后对填充后的测试数据进行第二级压缩,即改进游程编码压缩.对ISCAS89基准电路的实验结果表明,本文方案能取得比golomb码、FDR码、EFDR码、9C码、BM码等更高的压缩率,同时还能协同优化测试时的捕获功耗和移位功耗.     

动态向量调整的多扫描链测试数据压缩

 由于多扫描链测试方案能够提高测试进度,更适合大规模集成电路的测试,因此提出了一种应用于多扫描链的测试数据压缩方案.该方案引入循环移位处理模式,动态调整向量,能够保留向量中无关位,增加向量的外延,从而提高向量间的相容性和反向相容性;同时,该方案还能够采用一种有效的参考向量更替技术,进一步提高向量间的相关性,减少编码位数.另外,该方案能够利用已有的移位寄存器,减少不必要的硬件开销.实验结果表明所提方案在保持多扫描链测试优势的前提下能够进一步提高测试数据压缩率,满足确定性测试和混合内建自测试.