High-level test compaction techniques

Srivaths Ravi, Ganesh Lakshminarayana, Niraj K. Jha

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Available register-transfer level (RTL) test generation techniques do not make a concerted effort to reduce the test application time associated with the derived tests. Chip tester memory limitations, increasing tester costs, etc., make it imperative that the issue of generating compact tests at the RTL be addressed and consolidated with the known gains of high-level testing. In this paper, the authors provide a comprehensive framework for generating compact tests for an RTL circuit. They develop a series of techniques that exploit the inherent parallelism available in symbolic test(s) derived for RTL module(s). These techniques enable them to schedule testing of multiple modules in parallel as well as perform test pipelining. In addition, the authors also present design for testability (DFT) techniques for lowering test application time. Using a maximum bipartite matching formulation, they choose a low-overhead set of test enhancements that can achieve compact tests. The authors' techniques can seamlessly plug into any generic high-level test framework. Their experimental results in the context of one such framework indicate that the proposed methodology achieves an average reduction in test application time of 54.2% for the example circuits.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)827-841
Number of pages15
JournalIEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
Volume21
Issue number7
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 2002

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Keywords

  • Design for testability
  • RTL test generation
  • Symbolic testing
  • Test compaction

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