Report Number: CSL-TR-97-716
Institution: Stanford University, Computer Systems Laboratory
Title: Checking Experiments for Scan Chain Lathes and Flip-FLops
Author: Makar, Samy
Date: August 1997
Abstract: New digital designs often include scan chains; high quality economical test is the reason. A scan chain allows easy access to internal combinational logic by converting bistable elements, latches and flip-flops, into a shift register. Test patterns are scanned in, applied to the internal circuitry, and the results are scanned out for comparison. While many techniques exist for testing the combinational circuitry, little attention has been paid to testing the bistable elements themselves. The bistable elements are typically tested by shifting in a sequence of zeroes and ones. This test can miss many defects inside the bistable elements. A checking experiment is a sequence of inputs and outputs that contains enough information to extract the functionality of the circuit. A new approach, based on such sequences, can significantly reduce the number of defects missed. Simulation results show that as many as 20 percent of the faults in bistable elements can be missed by typical tests; essentially all of these missed faults are detected by checking experiments. Since the checking experiment is a functional test, it is independent of the implementation of the bistable element. This is especially useful since designers often use different implementations of bistable elements to optimize their circuits for area and performance. Another benefit of a functional test is that it avoids the need for generating test patterns at the transistor level. Applying a complete checking experiment to a bistable element embedded inside a circuit can be very difficult, if not impossible. The new approach breaks up the checking experiment into a set of small sub-sequences. For each of these sub-sequences a test pattern is generated. These test patterns are scanned in, as in the case of the tests for combinational logic, appropriate changes to the control inputs of the bistable elements are applied, and the results are scanned out. The process of generating the patterns is automated by modifying an existing stuck-at test generator. A designer or test engineer need only provide a gate level description of the circuit to generate tests that guarantee a checking experiment for each bistable element in the design. Test size is an important economic factor in circuit design. The size of the checking-experiment-based test increases with circuit size at about the same rate as the traditional test, indicating that it is practical for large circuits. Checking-experiment-based tests are an effective economic means for testing the bistable elements in scan chain designs.
http://i.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/reports/csl/tr/97/716/CSL-TR-97-716.pdf