Fifth Asian Test Symposium (ATS'96)
Easily Testable Data Path Allocation Using Input/Output Registers
Hsinchu, TAIWAN
November 20-November 22
ISBN: 0-8186-7478-4
Li-Ren Huang, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Taiwan Univ., Taipei, Taiwan
Jing-Yang Jou, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Taiwan Univ., Taipei, Taiwan
Sy-Yen Kuo, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Taiwan Univ., Taipei, Taiwan
Wen-Bin Liao, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Taiwan Univ., Taipei, Taiwan
Most existing behavioral synthesis systems concentrate on area and performance optimization, while ignoring other design qualities such as testability. In this paper, we present three algorithms for register, module, and interconnection allocation of behavioral synthesis respectively to improve testability in data path allocation without assuming any specific test strategy. By using primary input/output registers effectively, the proposed algorithms produce RTL designs with better testability, while incur low or even no hardware overhead. Four benchmarks are synthesized using the proposed approaches and the results are compared with the best results of similar works in the literature. It shows that our approaches give both higher fault coverage and lower hardware overhead.
Index Terms:
circuit optimisation; testable data path allocation; behavioral synthesis systems; input/output registers; interconnection allocation; module allocation; register allocation; algorithms; RTL design; benchmarks; higher fault coverage; lower hardware overhead; improved testability; DFT; VLSI synthesis; ATPG; optimization
Citation:
Li-Ren Huang, Jing-Yang Jou, Sy-Yen Kuo, Wen-Bin Liao, "Easily Testable Data Path Allocation Using Input/Output Registers," ats, pp.142, Fifth Asian Test Symposium (ATS'96), 1996