Design for testing

About: Design for testing is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3946 publications have been published within this topic receiving 63049 citations. The topic is also known as: Design for Testability, DFT.

Challenges in testing core-based system ICs

Abstract: Advances in semiconductor design and manufacturing technology enable the design of complete systems on one IC. To develop these system ICs in a timely manner, traditional IC design in which everything is designed from scratch, is replaced by a design style based on embedding large reusable modules, the so-called cores. Effectively, the design of a core-based IC is partitioned over the core provider(s) and the system-chip integrator. The development of tests should follow the same partitioning. We describe the differences between traditional and core-based test development, and present an overview of current industrial approaches. We list the future challenges regarding standardization, tool development, and academic and industrial research.

Are advanced DfT structures sufficient for preventing scan-attacks?

Abstract: Standard Design for Testability (DfT) structures are well known as potential sources of confidential information leakage. Scan-based attacks have been reported in publications since the early 2000s. It has been shown for instance that the secret key for symmetric encryption standards (DES, AES) could be retrieved from information gathered on scan-out pins when scan-chains are fully observed through these pins. However DfT practices have progressed to adapt to large and complex designs such as test response compaction, associated X-masking structure, partial scan, etc. As a side effect, these techniques mask part of the information collected on scan outputs. Thus, at first glance, they may appear as countermeasures against scan-based attacks. Nevertheless, in this paper we show that DfT structures, regardless of their nature, do not inherently enhance security and that specific additional countermeasures are still needed. We propose a new-scan attack able to deal with designs where only part of the internal circuit's state is observed for test purpose.

A novel test methodology for core-based system LSIs and a testing time minimization problem

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a novel test methodology for core-based system LSIs. Our test methodology aims to decrease testing time for core-based system LSIs. Considering testing time reduction, our test methodology is based on BIST and ATPG. The main contributions of this paper are summarized as follows. (i). BIST is efficiently combined with external testing to relax the limitation of the external primary inputs and outputs. (ii). External testing for one of cores and BISTs for the others are performed in parallel to reduce the total testing time. (iii). The testing time minimization problem for core-based system LSIs is formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem to select the optimal set of test vectors from given sets of test vectors for each core.

An Integrated System-Level Design for Testability Methodology

Abstract: HARDWARE TESTING is commonly used to check whether faults exist in a digital system. Much research has been devoted to the development of advanced hardware testing techniques and methods to support ...

Rescue: A Microarchitecture for Testability and Defect Tolerance

Abstract: Scaling feature size improves processor performance but increases each deviceýs susceptibility to defects (i.e., hard errors). As a result, fabrication technology must improve significantly to maintain yields. Redundancy techniques in memory have been successful at improving yield in the presence of defects. Apart from core sparing which disables faulty cores in a chip multiprocessor, little has been done to target the core logic. While previous work has proposed that either inherent or added redundancy in the core logic can be used to tolerate defects, the key issues of realistic testing and fault isolation have been ignored. This paper is the first to consider testability and fault isolation in designing modern high-performance, defect-tolerant microarchitectures. We define intra-cycle logic independence (ICI) as the condition needed for conventional scan test to isolate faults quickly to the microarchitectural-block granularity. We propose logic transformations to redesign conventional superscalar microarchitecture to comply with ICI. We call our novel, testable, and defect-tolerant microarchitecture Rescue. We build a verilog model of Rescue and verify that faults can be isolated to the required precision using only conventional scan test. Using performace simulations, we show that ICI transformations reduce IPC only by 4% on average for SPEC2000 programs. Taking yield improvement into account, Rescue improves average yield-adjusted instruction throughput over core sparing by 12% and 22% at 32nm and 18nm technology nodes, respectively.