Design of a Test Processor for Asynchronous Chip Test
Steffen Zeidler, Christoph Wolf, Milos D. Krstic, Frank Vater, Rolf Kraemer · 2011
Due to asynchronous timing and arbitration asynchronous designs may behave no deterministically. For the test of such systems, this means that an exact timing, i.e. a tester cycle, of a test response cannot be guaranteed. This behavior makes functional tests of asynchronous designs relatively complex or even impossible. Therefore, this paper presents a concept for performing functional tests of asynchronous designs using a test processor infrastructure. To this end, we propose a low-cost 16-bit microprocessor solution with special support of asynchronous handshake signalling that can either be integrated into the device-under-test (DUT), mounted on the load board of the tester or a combination of both.