Understanding Scandump: A Key Silicon Debugging Technique


Scandump is an advanced silicon debugging technique that ingeniously repurposes DFT (Design For Testability) scan chains for functional debugging. This method allows for the extraction of states from registers or latches that are stitched into the scan chains, providing critical diagnostic insights. Scandump is particularly invaluable when the CPU is deadlocked or when the system hardware bec... » read more

Reversible Chain Diagnosis


For advanced technologies, the industry is seeing very complicated silicon defect types and defect distribution. One consequence is that scan chain diagnosis becomes more difficult. To improve the resolution of scan chain diagnosis, Tessent Diagnosis can use new scan chain test patterns to leverage a reversible scan chain architecture. This paper describes the novel scan chain architecture t... » read more

Digital Test Bulks Up – Or Down


Large digital integrated circuits are becoming harder to test in a time- and cost-efficient manner. AI chips, in particular, have tiled architectures that are putting pressure on older testing strategies due to the volume of test vectors required. In some cases, these chips are so large that they exceed reticle size, requiring them to be stitched together. New testing efficiencies are needed... » read more

IC Test: Doing It At The Right Place At The Right Time


In the real world, we are slaves to our environment. The decisions we make are dependent on the resources available at any given time. In school, I remember coming up with a binary decision diagram (BDD) variable-ordering algorithm that relied on partial BDDs. Was that the best algorithm to determine the variable ordering of a BDD for a design? Probably not. However, it was easy to do as a coll... » read more

New Drivers For Test


Mention Design for Test (DFT) and scan chains come to mind, but there is much more to it than that—and the rules of the game are changing. New application areas such as automotive may breathe new life into built-in self-test (BIST) solutions, which could also be used for manufacturing test. So could DFT as we know it be a thing of the past? Or will it continue to have a role to play? Te... » read more