Combined input test data volume reduction for mixed broadside and skewed‐load test sets

Abstract

Several approaches exist for reducing the input test data volume beyond the use of test data compression. These approaches use each stored test for applying several different tests. This study develops an approach that combines the advantages of several existing approaches for the application of broadside or skewed-load tests for transition faults. The importance of the combination is that it magnifies the possibility of producing new broadside and skewed-load tests from a stored test, thus allowing the number of stored tests to be reduced further. The combined approach is based on clocking the circuit in functional or shift mode for several clock cycles after a scan-in operation in order to bring it to different states. Each state can be used as the initial state of different broadside or skewed-load tests.