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Time, power, and data volume are among some of the most challenging issues for testing System-on-Chip (SoC) and have not been fully resolved, even if a scan-based technique is employed. A novel architecture, referred to the Selective Trigger Scan architecture, is introduced in this paper to address these issues. This architecture reduces switching activity in the circuit-under-test (CUT) and increases the clock frequency of the scanning process. An auxiliary chain is utilized in this architecture to avoid the large number of transitions to the CUT during the scan-in process, as well as enabling retention of the currently applied test vectors and applying only necessary changes to them. The auxiliary chain shifts in the difference between consecutive test vectors and only the required transitions (referred to as trigger data) are applied to the CUT. Power requirements are substantially reduced; moreover, DFT penalties are reduced because no additional multiplexer is utilized along the scan path. Data reformatting is applied in order to make the proposed architecture amenable to data compression, thus permitting a further reduction in test time. It also permits delay fault testing. Using ISCAS 85 and 89 benchmark circuits, the effectiveness of this architecture for improving SoC test measures (such as power, time, and data volume) is experimentally evaluated and confirmed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compression has been used in automatic test equipment (ATE) to reduce storage and application time for high volume data by exploiting the repetitive nature of test vectors. The application of a binary compression method to an ATE environment for manufacturing is studied using a technique, referred to as reuse. In reuse, compression is achieved by partitioning the vector set and removing repeating segments. This process has O(n²) time complexity for compression (where n is the number of vectors) with a simple hardware decoding circuitry. It is shown that for industrial system-on-chip (SoC) designs, the efficiency of the reuse compression technique is comparable to sophisticated software techniques with the advantage of easy and fast decoding. Two shift register-based decompression schemes are presented; they can be either incorporated into internal scan chains or built in the tester's head. The proposed compression method has been applied to industrial test and data and an average compression rate of 84% has been achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]