Low power scan by partitioning and scan hold

Abstract

Scan testing dynamic power consumption can induce reliability problems in the circuit under test (CUT) during manufacturing testing. In this paper, we propose a scan chain partitioning technique, supported by a scan hold mechanism, for low power dissipation during the shift phase of the scan testing procedures. Substantial power reductions can be achieved either in built-in self test (BIST) or non-BIST scan-based testing environments, without test application time increase, fault coverage decrease, scan cell reordering and clock gating.