14th IEEE VLSI Test Symposium (VTS '96)
Built-in self-test of logic blocks in FPGAs (Finally, a free lunch: BIST without overhead!)
Princeton, NJ
April 28-May 01
ISBN: 0-8186-7304-4
C. Stroud, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Kentucky Univ., Lexington, KY, USA
S. Konala, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Kentucky Univ., Lexington, KY, USA
Ping Chen, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Kentucky Univ., Lexington, KY, USA
M. Abramovici, Dept. of Electr. Eng., Kentucky Univ., Lexington, KY, USA
We present a new approach for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) testing that exploits the reprogrammability of FPGAs to create Built-In Self-Test (BIST) logic only during off-line test. As a result, BIST is achieved without any area overhead or performance penalties to the system function implemented by the FPGA. Our approach is applicable to all levels of testing, achieves maximal fault coverage, and all tests are applied at-speed. We describe the BIST architecture used to test all the programmable logic blocks in an FPGA and the configurations required to implement our approach using a commercial FPGA. We also discuss implementation problems caused by CAD tool limitations and limited architectural resources, and we describe techniques which overcome these limitations.
Index Terms:
built-in self test; field programmable gate arrays; logic testing; integrated circuit testing; VLSI; automatic testing; built-in self-test; FPGA testing; field programmable gate array testing; BIST architecture; programmable logic blocks
Citation:
C. Stroud, S. Konala, Ping Chen, M. Abramovici, "Built-in self-test of logic blocks in FPGAs (Finally, a free lunch: BIST without overhead!)," vts, pp.387, 14th IEEE VLSI Test Symposium (VTS '96), 1996