Adaptative backtrace and dynamic partitioning enhance ATPG (IC testing)
Antonio Lioy · 2003
Two improvements to existing automatic-test-pattern-generation (ATPG) algorithms are proposed. First, an adaptive technique has been introduced to solve internal conflicts in the backtrace phase of previous algorithms. This has proved useful in reducing the number of backtracks, allowing tests to be generated faster and more redundancies to be identified. In addition, to cope with the large size of present VLSI circuits, the author has also proposed to dynamically identify useless regions, which can be dropped from consideration. This way it has been possible to considerably speed up the overall test generation tasks. An ATPG system based on these ideas has been developed and it has proved effective in generating test for large circuits.>