For large, complex ICs, engineers need efficient techniques for debugging first silicon. The system presented here consists of an on-chip debug infrastructure and supporting debugger software,which interacts with the infrastructure to make the chip's features accessible through a serial interface.

Design for debug: catching design errors in digital chips

Modern electronics testing has a legacy of more than 40 years. The introduction of new technologies, especially nanometer technologies with 90nm or smaller geometry, has allowed the semiconductor industry to keep pace with the increased performance-capacity demands from consumers. As a result, semiconductor test costs have been growing steadily and typically amount to 40% of today's overall product cost. 

This book is a comprehensive guide to new VLSI Testing and Design-for-Testability techniques that will allow students, researchers, DFT practitioners, and VLSI designers to master quickly System-on-Chip Test architectures, for test debug and diagnosis of digital, memory, and analog/mixed-signal designs.

KEY FEATURES
* Emphasizes VLSI Test principles and Design for Testability architectures, with numerous illustrations/examples.
* Most up-to-date coverage available, including Fault Tolerance, Low-Power Testing, Defect and Error Tolerance, Network-on-Chip (NOC) Testing, Software-Based Self-Testing, FPGA Testing, MEMS Testing, and System-In-Package (SIP) Testing, which are not yet available in any testing book.
* Covers the entire spectrum of VLSI testing and DFT architectures, from digital and analog, to memory circuits, and fault diagnosis and self-repair from digital to memory circuits.
* Discusses future nanotechnology test trends and challenges facing the nanometer design era; promising nanotechnology test techniques, including Quantum-Dots, Cellular Automata, Carbon-Nanotubes, and Hybrid Semiconductor/Nanowire/Molecular Computing.
* Practical problems at the end of each chapter for students.

System-on-Chip Test Architectures: Nanometer Design for Testability

In this paper, we present a core-based scan architecture for silicon debug, which is currently being standardized within Philips. The reasons behind the core-based debug architecture, together with implementation details, are described. The choices that were made during its development are explained using the experiences gained from two large Philips system chips that each utilize core-based design and test, and scan-based silicon debug. The results of an area-cost evaluation of the presented architecture for these two large system chips are also presented.

Core-based scan architecture for silicon debug

Several emerging design-for-debug (DFD) methodologies are addressing silicon debug by making internal signal values and other data observable. Most of these methodologies require the instrumentation of on-chip logic for extracting the internal register data from in situ silicon. Unfortunately, lack of visibility of the combinational network values impedes the ability to functionally debug the silicon part. Visibility enhancement techniques enable the virtual observation of combinational nodes with minimal computational overhead. These techniques also cover the register selection analysis for DFD and multi-level design abstraction correlation for viewing values at the register transfer level (RTL). Experimental results show that visibility enhancement techniques can leverage a small amount of extracted data to provide a high amount of computed combinational signal data. Visibility enhancement provides the needed connection between data obtained from the DFD logic and HDL simulation-related debug systems.

Visibility enhancement for silicon debug

Some problems in a new chip design or its embedded software show up only when a silicon prototype of the chip is placed in its intended target environment and the embedded software is executed. Traditionally, embedded-system debug is very difficult and time-consuming because of the intrinsic lack of internal system observability in the target environment. Design for debug (DFD) is the act of adding debug support to a chip's design in the realization that not every silicon chip or embedded-software application is right the first time. In the past few years, functional debug has made significant progress. This article describes the most common structured approaches available for silicon debug of embedded systems.

Functional Debug Techniques for Embedded Systems

Decreasing feature sizes and increasing customer demand for more functionality have forced design teams to re-use design blocks and application platforms. As a result, re-use of test, design-for-test and design-for-debug for large system chips is becoming increasingly important and increasingly necessary.. In this paper, the test and debug features of the Nexperia/sup TM/ PNX8525 chip are presented. The PNX8525 chip is a large system chip for the consumer electronics market. The impact of core-based testing is discussed, at both the core-level and the top-level, together with the design-for-debug implementation on this multiple clock domain chip.

F. Bouwman

Papers

Test and debug strategy of the PNX8525 Nexperia/sup TM/ digital video platform system chip