S. Tragoudas
Abstract
Inserting controllable/observable points in the test architecture has been shown to be a viable method for reducing the number of path delay faults that need to be tested in a circuit. In order to have a minimal impact on the operation clock and more accuracy in testing, it is proposed that test points should be inserted with the additional constraint that every path has a bounded number of test points. A polynomial time solvable integer linear programming (ILP) formulation serves as the basis for the presented test placement methodology. Due to the ILP's global optimization property we achieve results that are comparable to those by an existing greedy technique for the less constrained test point placement problem.
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Index Terms
- Path delay fault testing using test points
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Reviews
Festus Gail Gray
An interesting theoretical problem is addressed in this paper: when inserting exactly one test point in each physical path in a circuit (thereby dividing each physical path into two segments, and partitioning the circuit into two disjoint pieces), where should the test points be located so as to minimize the total number of paths in the modified circuit__?__ The authors present a polynomial time integer linear programming solution to the problem. They also assume that each test point is both controllable and observable, and that the test points are connected into a scan chain, for use in applying test vectors and observing test results. When compared to the algorithm in Pomeranz and Reddy [1], the new algorithm inserts fewer test points per path (which places fewer demands on the operational test clock, and tends to reduce the complexity of the testing procedure), but generates many more paths most of the time (which increases test time, and tends to increase the complexity of the testing procedure). In some instances, the number of paths increased by more than a factor of ten. Since the complexity of the test application algorithm increases in complexity exponentially with the number of paths, it is not clear exactly when it would be a good engineering decision to use the new algorithm. In addition, the full Pomeranz and Reddy algorithm was not implemented for testing, so the comparison may not be valid. Online Computing Reviews Service
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