摘要:
A masking circuit for selectively masking scan chain inputs and/or outputs during scan testing of an integrated circuit, comprises a mask register having at least two mask register elements for each scan chain to provide a plurality of masking modes; and an input and output mask control circuit for each scan chain, each mask control circuit being connected between a test pattern source and a signature register and between a serial input and a serial output of an associated scan chain and being responsive to mask control data stored in the register elements for configuring the associated scan chain in one of the plurality of masking modes during a scan test of the circuit.
摘要:
A test clock controller for generating a test clock signal for scan chains in integrated circuits having one or more clock domains, comprises a shift clock controller for generating a shift clock signal for use in loading test patterns into scan chains in the clock domains and for unloading a test response patterns from the scan chains and for generating a burst phase signal after loading a test pattern; and a burst clock controller associated with each of one or more clock domains and responsive to a burst phase signal for generating a burst of clock pulses derived from a respective reference clocks and including a first group of burst clock pulses having a selected reduced frequency relative to the reference clock and a second group of burst clock pulses having a frequency corresponding to that of the reference clock.
摘要:
A method of and apparatus for testing multi-port memory performs a shadow read to an adjacent memory cell concurrent with a write operation associated with typical read-write testing. In the presence of a bit wire short or a word wire short, the concurrent read of an adjacent memory cell will cause the value of that cell to be corrupted. The corrupted value is then found by the read-write testing. Consequently, the testing takes no longer than read-write testing. In addition, the testing scheme can be modified for memory with read only ports. An embodiment of the apparatus employs an exclusive OR gate on the least significant bit of the test row address line to generate the shadow read address.
摘要:
A method for at-speed testing high-performance digital systems and circuits having combinational logic and memory elements that may be both scannable and non-scannable is performed by enabling at least two clock pulses during a capture sequence following a shift sequence. The method provides for initialization of any non-scannable memory elements via the scannable memory elements at the beginning of the test before an at-speed test is performed. During initialization, control logic generates a signal to disable the generation of system clock pulses for capture. Instead, only one clock cycle derived from the test clock or a system clock is generated to initialize the non-scannable elements. The number of shift sequences required depends on the maximum number of non-scannable elements that must be traversed between two scannable memory elements. During the same initialization period, the output response analyzer is disabled since unknown data values will present in the stream of data shifted out. A test controller is clocked a test clock and includes a clock generation module for generating shift and capture clocks. The test clock can be an independent and asynchronous clock or derived from the system clock. The test can also be performed by using only the test clock in the case only the test clock is available or for diagnostic and debug purposes.
摘要:
A clocking method for at-speed scan testing for delay defects in cross-domain paths of interacting synchronous clock domains in a scan circuit, each path originating from a source memory element in one of the domains and terminating at a destination memory element in another of the domains and comprises selectively aligning either a capture edge or a launch edge of the clock of each domain with a corresponding edge of at least one other domain of the interacting synchronous clock domains to determine the cross-domain paths to be tested between a source domain and a destination domain; clocking memory elements in each domain at respective domain clock rates to launch signal transitions from source memory elements in source domains; and for each pair of interacting clock domains under test, capturing, in the destination domain, circuit responses to signal transitions launched along paths originating from the source domain and selectively disabling capturing, in the source domain, of circuit responses to signal transitions launched along paths originating from the destination domain.
摘要:
A system for repairing embedded memories on an integrated circuit is disclosed. The system comprises an external Built-In Self-repair Register (BISR) associated with every reparable memory on the circuit. Each BISR is configured to accept a serial input from a daisy chain connection and to generate a serial output to a daisy chain connection, so that a plurality of BISRs are connected in a daisy chain with a fuse box controller. The fuse box controller has no information as to the number, configuration or size of the embedded memories, but determines, upon power up, the length of the daisy chain. With this information, the fuse box controller may perform a corresponding number of serial shift operations to move repair data to and from the BISRs and into and out of a fuse box associated with the controller. Memories having a parallel repair interface are supported by a parallel address bus and enable control signal on the BISR, while those having a serial repair interface are supported by a parallel daisy chain path that may be selectively cycled to shift the contents of the BISR to an internal serial register in the memory. Preferably, each of the BISRs has an associated repair analysis facility having a parallel address bus and enable control signal by which fuse data may be dumped in parallel into the BISR and from there, either uploaded to the fuse box through the controller or downloaded into the memory to effect repairs. Advantageously, pre-designed circuit blocks may provide daisy chain inputs and access ports to effect the inventive system therealong or to permit the circuit block to be bypassed for testing purposes.
摘要:
A method for use in the hierarchical design of integrated circuits having at least one module, each the module having functional memory elements and combinational logic, the method comprising reading in a description of the circuit; replacing the description of each functional memory element of the modules with a description of a scannable memory element configurable in scan mode and capture mode; partitioning each module into an internal partition and a peripheral partition by converting the description of selected scannable memory elements into a description of peripheral scannable memory elements which are configurable in an internal test mode, an external test mode and a normal operation mode; modifying the description of modules in the circuit description so as to arrange the memory elements into scan chains in which peripheral and internal scannable memory elements of each module are controlled by an associated module test controller when configured in internal test mode; and peripheral scannable memory elements of each module are controlled by a top-level test controller when configured in an external test mode; and verifying the correct operation of the internal test mode and the external test mode of the circuit.
摘要:
A method and a circuit of testing of a memory interface associated with an embedded memory in a semiconductor circuit involves writing to two memory locations in succession; reading the two memory locations in succession in the same order in which the two memory locations were written; capturing output data from the memory interface; and analyzing captured output data to determine whether said captured output data corresponds to expected data.
摘要:
A method of designing a scan testable integrated circuit with embedded test objects for use in scan testing the circuit, comprises compiling a register-transfer level (RTL) circuit description of the circuit into an unmapped circuit description; extracting information from the unmapped circuit description for use in generating and inserting RTL descriptions of test objects into the RTL circuit description and for use in generating and inserting scan chains into the circuit; generating and inserting the RTL descriptions of the test objects into the RTL circuit description to produce a modified RTL circuit description; storing the modified RTL circuit description; synthesizing the modified RTL description into a gate level circuit description of the circuit; and constructing and inserting scan chains into the gate level circuit description according to information extracted from the unmapped circuit description.
摘要:
A method and circuit for collecting memory failure information on-chip and unloading the information in real time while performing a test of memory embedded in a circuit comprises, for each column or row of a memory under test, testing each memory location of the column or row according to a memory test algorithm under control of a first clock, selectively generating a failure summary on-circuit while testing each column or row of the memory; and transferring the failure summary from the circuit under control of a second clock within the time required to test the next column or row, if any, of the memory under test.