Hybrid Test Data Transportation Scheme for Advanced NoC-Based SoCs

Abstract

Network-on-chip (NoC) has evolved to overcome the issues of traditional bus-based on-chip interconnect. In NoC-reuse as TAM, the test schedulers are constrained with the topological position of cores and test access points, which may negatively affect the test time. This paper presents a scalable hybrid test data transportation scheme that allows to simultaneously test multiple heterogeneous cores of NoC-based SoCs, while reusing NoC as TAM. In the proposed test scheme, single test stimuli set of multiple CUTs is embedded into each flit of the test stimuli packets and those packets are multicast to the targeted CUTs. However, the test response packets of each CUT are unicast towards the tester. To reduce network load, a flit is filled with maximum possible test response sets before unicasting towards the tester. With the aid of Verilog and analytical simulations, the proposed scheme is proved effective and the results are compared with some recent techniques.