We IC people have been running scared our entire careers. We?ve worried that the next process node, the next tenfold increase in gate and transistor count, will break our tools and create a set of defects that we don?t know how to test. Delay test is finally mainstream, but besides this most designs use plain-vanilla full-scan test. But we have no reason to be scared; that is, until we get to a very different methodology--for example, nanotechnology, biotechnology, or quantum computing, where the right answer only comes out statistically.
Index Terms:
IC, delay test, full-scan test, design for testability, defects
Citation:
Scott Davidson, "What's the problem?," IEEE Design and Test of Computers, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 392, July/Aug. 2005, doi:10.1109/MDT.2005.98