Capture-power-aware test data compression using selective encoding

Abstract

Ever-increasing test data volume and excessive test power are two of the main concerns of VLSI testing. The “don’t-care” bits (also known as X-bits) in given test cube can be exploited for test data compression and/or test power reduction, and these techniques may contradict to each other because the very same X-bits are likely to be used for different optimization objectives. This paper proposes a capture-power-aware test compression scheme that is able to keep capture-power under a safe limit with low test compression ratio loss. Experimental results on benchmark circuits validate the effectiveness of the proposed solution.