Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]

Skip to main content
Log in

A Novel EDA Tool for VLSI Test Vectors Management

  • Published:
Journal of Electronic Testing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In today’s semiconductor industry, where time-to-profit is a critical factor to remain competitive, missing the tight market window might have serious implications including the risk of product cancellation. This places severe pressure on every aspect related to the design and the verification of semiconductor chips to get the design ready for manufacturing in the shortest time possible. To avoid the need for costly corrective steps and silicon re-spins during post-silicon verification, thorough pre-silicon verification is essential to catch any design fault and estimate the design overall reliability before the design is manufactured. This paper presents a novel EDA tool that helps the verification team improve the verification process in several ways. It can be used to generate useful statistics regarding the complexity and the coverage of the created test vectors. Experimental results prove that the verification team can successfully use the proposed tool to set their target coverage and intelligently select the set of test vectors that achieves that target using the minimum number of computing cycles.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Aickelin U (2002) An indirect genetic algorithm for set covering problems. J Oper Res Soc 53:1118–1126

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Balas E, Carrera MC (1996) A dynamic subgradient-based branch-and-bound procedure for set covering. Eur J Oper Res 44:875–890, November

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Beasley JE, Chu PC (1996) A genetic algorithm for the set covering problem. Eur J Oper Res 94:392–404, October

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  4. Beiu V, Rückert U, Roy S, Nyathi J (2004) On nanoelectronic architectural challenges and solutions. Proc IEEE Conf Nanotech, IEEE-NANO’04, Munich, Germany, pp 628–631, Aug.

  5. Bourianoff GI (2003) The future of nanocomputing. IEEE Comput 36:44–53, August

    Google Scholar 

  6. Bryant RE, Cheng KT, Kahng AB, Keutzer K, Maly W, Newton R, Pillegi L, Rabaey JM, Sangiovanni-Vincentelli A (2001) Limitations and challenges for computer-aided design technology for CMOS VLSI. Proc IEEE 89:341–365, March

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Cadence Functional Verification Kit for ARM, available at, http://www.cadence.com/datasheets/arm_func _ver_kit.pdf

  8. Cheng W-T (2000) Current status and future trend on CAD tools for VLSI testing. Proc 9th Asian Test Symp, ATS’00, Taipei, Taiwan pp 10–11, December

  9. Corno F, Prinetto P, Rebaudengo M, Sonza Reorda M, Veiluva E (1995) A portable ATPG tool for parallel and distributed systems. IEEE VLSI Test Symp, Princeton, USA, pp 29–34, April

  10. Corno F, Rebaudengo M, Sonza Reorda M, Violante M (1999) Optimal vector selection for low power BIST. Proc IEEE Int Symp on Defect & Fault Tolerance in VLSI Sys., DFT’99, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, pp 219–226, November

  11. Davis JA, Venkatesan R, Kaloyeros A, Beylansky M, Souri SJ, Banerjee K, Saraswat KC, Rahman A, Reif R, Meindl JD (2001) Interconnect Limits on Gigascale Integration (GSI) in the 21st Century. Proc. IEEE 89:305–324, March

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. De Bontridder KMJ, Halldorsson BV, Halldorsson MM, Hurkens CAJ, Lenstra JK, Ravi R, Stougie L (2003) Approximation algorithms for the test cover problem. Math Program 98:477–491

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. De Bontridder KMJ, Lageweg BJ, Lenstra JK, Orlin JB, Stougie L (2002) Branch-and-bound algorithms for the test cover problem. Proc of the 10th Eur Symp on Alg (ESA’02) vol. 2461, Springer, Heidelberg, pp 223–233

  14. Edbom S, Larsson E (2004) An integrated technique for test vector selection and test scheduling under test time constraint. Proc 13th Asian Test Symp 254–257, November

  15. Forshaw M, Stadler R, Crawley D, Nicoliæ K (2004) A short review of nanoelectronic architectures. Nanotechnology 15:S220–S223, April

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Frank DJ, Dennard RH, Nowak E, Solomon PM, Taur Y, Wong H-SP (2001) Device scaling limits of Si MOSFETs and their application dependencies. Proc IEEE 89(3):259–288, March

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. GAlib, “A C++ Library of Genetic Algorithm Components”, version 2.4.6. Available at http://lancet.mit.edu/ga/

  18. Garey MR, Johnson DS (1979) Computers and intractability: A guide to the theory of NP-completeness, Freeman, San Francisco

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  19. Grosman T, Wool A (1997) Computational experience with approximation algorithms for the set covering problem. Eur J Oper Res 101:81–92, August

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Harlow JE III (2003) Toward design technology in 2020: Trends, issues, and challenges. Proc Intl Symp VLSI (ISVLSI’03), Tampa, FL, USA, pp 3–4, February

  21. International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), 2005 Edition and 2006 Update, Intl. SEMATECH, Austin, TX, USA, Available at http://public.itrs.net/

  22. Krishnamurthy N, Abadir MS, Martin AK, Abraham JA (2001) Design and development paradigm for industrial formal verification CAD tools. IEEE Des Test Comput 18:26–35, August

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Lajolo M, Rebaudengo M, Reorda MS, Violante M, Lavagno L (2000) Behavioral-level test vector generation for system-on-chip sesigns. Proc IEEE Int. High-Level Design Validation and Test Workshop, Berkeley, CA, USA, pp 21–26, November

  24. Li J, Kwan RSK (2004) A meta-heuristic with orthogonal experiment for the set covering problem. J Math Model Algorithms 3:263–283

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  25. Lp_solve, “A Free Linear (integer) Programming Solver, version 5.1.1.3. available at http://lpsolve. sourceforge.net/5.1/

  26. Mead C, Conway L (1980) Introduction to VLSI systems. Addision-Wesley

  27. Meindl JD, Chen Q, Davis JA (2001) Limits on silicon nanoelectronics for terascale integration. Science 293(553):2044–2049, September

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Moret B, Shapiro H (1985) On minimizing a set of tests. Siam J Sci Statist Comput 6:983–1003

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Ohlsson M, Peterson C, Söberderg B (2001) An efficient mean field approach to the set covering problem. Eur J Oper Res 133:583–599, September

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Roychowdhury VP, Janes DB, Bandyopadhyay S (1997) Nanoelectronic architectures for Boolean logic. Proc IEEE 85:574–588, April

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Sakurai T (2000) Design challenges for 0.1 μm and beyond. Proc. Asia & South Pacific Design Autom Conf (ASP-DAC’00), Tokyo, Japan, pp 553–558, January

  32. Sen S (1993) Minimal cost set covering using probabilistic methods. Proc ACM Symp on Applied Comp: States of the Art and Practice, pp 157–164

  33. Solar M, Parada V, Urrutia R (2002) A parallel genetic algorithm to solve the set-covering problem. Comput Oper Res 29(9):1221–1235, August

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  34. Synopsis Discovery Verification Platform, available at http://www.synopsys.com/products/solutions/ discovery_platform.html

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Walid Ibrahim.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: M. Abadir

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Ibrahim, W. A Novel EDA Tool for VLSI Test Vectors Management. J Electron Test 23, 421–434 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-007-5002-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10836-007-5002-x

Keywords

Navigation