匹配壓降分布之訊號傳遞效率最佳化填充以提升全速掃描鏈測試品質

Abstract

在測試模式下，過多的信號轉換動作(switching activity)會降低電路效能(circuit performance)，導致良好的晶片未通過測試，造成良率損失。本篇論文提出了一考慮壓降的測試圖樣(test pattern)產生方式—MIR-fill來產生高測試品質(test quality)的圖樣。藉由控制信號的轉換動作，使測試圖樣在電路中的壓降分布(IR-drop dis-tribution)匹配(match)使用者定義的壓降分布。實驗結果顯示利用此技術產生的測試圖樣，其壓降分布與使用者定義之壓降分布相似，且維持測試圖樣數量以及錯誤涵蓋率，並較先前研究加速了18倍。

The excessive circuit switching activity during scan-based at-speed testing has been known to cause yield loss because it degrades the circuit performance and can cause a good device to fail the test. In this thesis, we propose an IR-drop aware test pattern generator to produce high-quality at-speed test patterns. The idea is to manage the switching activity distribution of the generated test patterns so that the resulting IR-drop profiles match the user-specified ones. To improve the efficiency of the IR-drop matching process, the maximum-implication random-fill (MIR-fill) based IR-drop matching technique is developed. Simulation results show that the proposed test pattern generator generates test patterns with high similarity IR-drop distribution to user-specified one and also achieves 18 times speedup compared to the previous work.