Partitioning Functional Test Sequences Into Multicycle Functional Broadside Tests

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Multicycle tests have several advantages including the ability to support test compaction. By extracting multicycle functional broadside tests from functional test sequences, it is possible to ensure functional operation conditions during the functional capture cycles between the scan operations of a test. The challenge that this article addresses is that the computational effort of extracting $l$ -cycle functional broadside tests from a functional test sequence increases linearly with $l$ . Therefore, the computational effort of a test generation procedure that increases $l$ gradually to match $l$ to the circuit is quadratic in $l$ . This makes it infeasible to consider large values of $l$ that are important for test compaction. To address this challenge the paper develops a partitioning procedure under which test extraction requires the same computational effort for every $l$ . This article also describes a test generation procedure that is linear in $l$ . Experimental results for transition faults in benchmark circuits demonstrate the importance of large values of $l$ for test compaction.