TY - GEN
T1 - Align-Encode
T2 - International Test Conference 2008, ITC 2008
AU - Sinanoglu, Ozgur
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - While test stimulus compression helps reduce test time and data volume, and thus alleviates test costs, the delivery of certain test vectors may not be possible, leading to test quality degradation. Whether a test vector is encodable in the presence of a decompressor strongly hinges on the distribution ofits care bits. In this paper, wepresent a technique that provides an on-chip capability tojudiciously manipulate care bit distribution of a test vector We thus propose a hardware block, namely, Align-Encode, to be utilized along with any decompressor to boost the effectiveness ofthe decompressor. Align-Encode is reconfigured on a per pattern basis to delay the shift-in operations in selected scan chains, in order to align the scan slices in such a way that more test vectors become encodable. The reconfigurability ofAlign-Encode provides a test pattern independent solution, wherein any given set oftest vectors can be analyzed to compute the proper delay information. We map the delay computation problem to the maximal clique problem, and utilize an efficient heuristic to provide a near-optimal solution. Experimental results also justify the test pattern encodability enhancements that Align-Encode delivers, enabling significant test quality improvements andlor test cost reductions even when used with simple decompressors.
AB - While test stimulus compression helps reduce test time and data volume, and thus alleviates test costs, the delivery of certain test vectors may not be possible, leading to test quality degradation. Whether a test vector is encodable in the presence of a decompressor strongly hinges on the distribution ofits care bits. In this paper, wepresent a technique that provides an on-chip capability tojudiciously manipulate care bit distribution of a test vector We thus propose a hardware block, namely, Align-Encode, to be utilized along with any decompressor to boost the effectiveness ofthe decompressor. Align-Encode is reconfigured on a per pattern basis to delay the shift-in operations in selected scan chains, in order to align the scan slices in such a way that more test vectors become encodable. The reconfigurability ofAlign-Encode provides a test pattern independent solution, wherein any given set oftest vectors can be analyzed to compute the proper delay information. We map the delay computation problem to the maximal clique problem, and utilize an efficient heuristic to provide a near-optimal solution. Experimental results also justify the test pattern encodability enhancements that Align-Encode delivers, enabling significant test quality improvements andlor test cost reductions even when used with simple decompressors.
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U2 - 10.1109/TEST.2008.4700647
DO - 10.1109/TEST.2008.4700647
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:56749167506
SN - 9781424424030
T3 - Proceedings - International Test Conference
BT - Proceedings - International Test Conference 2008, ITC 2008
Y2 - 28 October 2008 through 30 October 2008
ER -