Fully Programmable Memory BIST for Commodity DRAMs

Abstract

To accomplish a high-speed test on low-speed automatic test equipment (ATE), a new instruction-based fully programmable memory built-in self-test (BIST) is proposed. The proposed memory BIST generates a high-speed internal clock signal by multiplying an external low-speed clock signal from an ATE by a clock multiplier embedded in a DRAM. For maximum programmability and small area overhead, the proposed memory BIST stores the unique sets of instructions and corresponding test sequences that are implicit within the test algorithms that it receives from an external ATE. The proposed memory BIST is managed by an external ATE on-the-fly to perform complicated and hard-to-implement functions, such as loop operations and refresh-interrupts. Therefore, the proposed memory BIST has a simple hardware structure compared to conventional memory BIST schemes. The proposed memory BIST is a practical test solution for reducing the overall test cost for the mass production of commodity DDRx SDRAMs.