Testing Of Digital Systems

Device testing represents the single largest manufacturing expense in the semiconductor industry, costing over $40 billion a year. The most comprehensive and wide ranging book of its kind, Testing of Digital Systems covers everything you need to know about this vitally important subject. Starting right from the basics, the authors take the reader through automatic test pattern generation, design for testability and built-in self-test of digital circuits before moving on to more advanced topics such as IDDQ testing, functional testing, delay fault testing, memory testing, and fault diagnosis. The book includes detailed treatment of the latest techniques including test generation for various fault models, discussion of testing techniques at different levels of integrated circuit hierarchy and a chapter on system-on-a-chip test synthesis. Written for students and engineers, it is both an excellent senior/graduate level textbook and a valuable reference.

This updated printing of the leading text and reference in digital systems testing and testable design provides comprehensive, state-of-the-art coverage of the field. Included are extensive discussions of test generation, fault modeling for classic and new technologies, simulation, fault simulation, design for testability, built-in self-test, and diagnosis. Complete with numerous problems, this book is a must-have for test engineers, ASIC and system designers, and CAD developers, and advanced engineering students will find this book an invaluable tool to keep current with recent changes in the field.

This book is about digital system testing and testable design. The concepts of testing and testability are treated together with digital design practices and methodologies. The book uses Verilog models and testbenches for implementing and explaining fault simulation and test generation algorithms. Extensive use of Verilog and Verilog PLI for test applications is what distinguishes this book from other test and testability books. Verilog eliminates ambiguities in test algorithms and BIST and DFT hardware architectures, and it clearly describes the architecture of the testability hardware and its test sessions. Describing many of the on-chip decompression algorithms in Verilog helps to evaluate these algorithms in terms of hardware overhead and timing, and thus feasibility of using them for System-on-Chip designs. Extensive use of testbenches and testbench development techniques is another unique feature of this book. Using PLI in developing testbenches and virtual testers provides a powerful programming tool, interfaced with hardware described in Verilog. This mixed hardware/software environment facilitates description of complex test programs and test strategies.

The modern electronic testing has a forty year history. Test professionals hold some fairly large conferences and numerous workshops, have a journal, and there are over one hundred books on testing. Still, a full course on testing is offered only at a few universities, mostly by professors who have a research interest in this area. Apparently, most professors would not have taken a course on electronic testing when they were students. Other than the computer engineering curriculum being too crowded, the major reason cited for the absence of a course on electronic testing is the lack of a suitable textbook. For VLSI the foundation was provided by semiconductor device techn- ogy, circuit design, and electronic testing. In a computer engineering curriculum, therefore, it is necessary that foundations should be taught before applications. The field of VLSI has expanded to systems-on-a-chip, which include digital, memory, and mixed-signalsubsystems. To our knowledge this is the first textbook to cover all three types of electronic circuits. We have written this textbook for an undergraduate “foundations” course on electronic testing. Obviously, it is too voluminous for a one-semester course and a teacher will have to select from the topics. We did not restrict such freedom because the selection may depend upon the individual expertise and interests. Besides, there is merit in having a larger book that will retain its usefulness for the owner even after the completion of the course. With equal tenacity, we address the needs of three other groups of readers.

IS THE TOPIC ANALOG TESTING AND DIAGNOSIS TIMELY? Yes, indeed it is. Testing and Diagnosis is an important topic and fulfills a vital need for the electronic industry. The testing and diagnosis of digital electronic circuits has been successfuIly developed to the point that it can be automated. Unfortu nately, its development for analog electronic circuits is still in its Stone Age. The engineer's intuition is still the most powerful tool used in the industry! There are two reasons for this. One is that there has been no pressing need from the industry. Analog circuits are usuaIly small in size. Sometimes, the engineer's experience and intuition are sufficient to fulfill the need. The other reason is that there are no breakthrough results from academic re search to provide the industry with critical ideas to develop tools. This is not because of a lack of effort. Both academic and industrial research groups have made major efforts to look into this problem. Unfortunately, the prob lem for analog circuits is fundamentally different from and much more diffi cult than its counterpart for digital circuits. These efforts have led to some important findings, but are still not at the point of being practicaIly useful. However, these situations are now changing. The current trend for the design of VLSI chips is to use analog/digital hybrid circuits, instead of digital circuits from the past. Therefore, even Ix x Preface though the analog circuit may be small, the total circuit under testing is large.

An Introduction to Logic Circuit Testing provides a detailed coverage of techniques for test generation and testable design of digital electronic circuits/systems. The material covered in the book should be sufficient for a course, or part of a course, in digital circuit testing for senior-level undergraduate and first-year graduate students in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The book will also be a valuable resource for engineers working in the industry. This book has four chapters. Chapter 1 deals with various types of faults that may occur in very large scale integration (VLSI)-based digital circuits. Chapter 2 introduces the major concepts of all test generation techniques such as redundancy, fault coverage, sensitization, and backtracking. Chapter 3 introduces the key concepts of testability, followed by some ad hoc design-for-testability rules that can be used to enhance testability of combinational circuits. Chapter 4 deals with test generation and response evaluation techniques used in BIST (built-in self-test) schemes for VLSI chips. Table of Contents: Introduction / Fault Detection in Logic Circuits / Design for Testability / Built-in Self-Test / References

Digital Systems Design with FPGAs and CPLDs explains how to design and develop digital electronic systems using programmable logic devices (PLDs). Totally practical in nature, the book features numerous (quantify when known) case study designs using a variety of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLD), for a range of applications from control and instrumentation to semiconductor automatic test equipment. Key features include: * Case studies that provide a walk through of the design process, highlighting the trade-offs involved. * Discussion of real world issues such as choice of device, pin-out, power supply, power supply decoupling, signal integrity- for embedding FPGAs within a PCB based design. With this book engineers will be able to: * Use PLD technology to develop digital and mixed signal electronic systems * Develop PLD based designs using both schematic capture and VHDL synthesis techniques * Interface a PLD to digital and mixed-signal systems * Undertake complete design exercises from design concept through to the build and test of PLD based electronic hardware This book will be ideal for electronic and computer engineering students taking a practical or Lab based course on digital systems development using PLDs and for engineers in industry looking for concrete advice on developing a digital system using a FPGA or CPLD as its core. Case studies that provide a walk through of the design process, highlighting the trade-offs involved. Discussion of real world issues such as choice of device, pin-out, power supply, power supply decoupling, signal integrity- for embedding FPGAs within a PCB based design.

Recent technological advances have created a testing crisis in the electronics industry--smaller, more highly integrated electronic circuits and new packaging techniques make it increasingly difficult to physically access test nodes. New testing methods are needed for the next generation of electronic equipment and a great deal of emphasis is being placed on the development of these methods. Some of the techniques now becoming popular include design for testability (DFT), built-in self-test (BIST), and automatic test vector generation (ATVG). This book will provide a practical introduction to these and other testing techniques. For each technique introduced, the author provides real-world examples so the reader can achieve a working knowledge of how to choose and apply these increasingly important testing methods.