An ATPG for Threshold Testing: Obtaining Acceptable Yield in Future Processes
ITC '02 Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Test Conference
Analysis and Testing for Error Tolerant Motion Estimation
DFT '05 Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems
Hardware Testing For Error Tolerant Multimedia Compression based on Linear Transforms
DFT '05 Proceedings of the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Defect and Fault Tolerance in VLSI Systems
Threshold testing: Covering bridging and other realistic faults
ATS '05 Proceedings of the 14th Asian Test Symposium on Asian Test Symposium
Journal of VLSI Signal Processing Systems
An Implicit Enumeration Algorithm to Generate Tests for Combinational Logic Circuits
IEEE Transactions on Computers
An Illustrated Methodology for Analysis of Error Tolerance
IEEE Design & Test
Multi-vector tests: a path to perfect error-rate testing
Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe
Error-rate testing to improve yield for error-tolerant applications
Error-rate testing to improve yield for error-tolerant applications
Diagnosis of automata failures: a calculus and a method
IBM Journal of Research and Development
Using implications to choose tests through suspect fault identification
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES) - Special section on adaptive power management for energy and temperature-aware computing systems
Journal of Electronic Testing: Theory and Applications
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Yields for digital very-large-scale-integration chips have been declining in the recent years, and the decline is accelerating as the technology moves deep into nanoscale. Recently, we have proposed the notion of error tolerance to improve yields for a wide range of high-performance digital applications, including audio, speech, video, graphics, visualization, games, and wireless communication. Error tolerance systematically codifies the fact that chips used in such applications can be acceptable despite having defects that produce erroneous outputs, provided that the errors are guaranteed to be of certain types and have severities within thresholds specified by the application. In this paper, we propose a new testing approach called threshold testing to practically exploit the notion of error tolerance for applications where errors with absolute numerical magnitudes lower than an application-specified threshold are acceptable. We propose a new automatic test pattern generator (ATPG) for threshold testing for single stuck-at faults. This test generator embodies several completely new techniques, including new approaches for directing the search for a test vector, new types of objectives, new types of necessary conditions, and new approaches to identify and exploit these conditions. We demonstrate that threshold testing can enhance yield and that it is practical in terms of test generation effort and test application costs. We also propose threshold fault simulators and ATPG for bridging and transition delay faults. We use these tools to show that the stuck-at-fault model is indeed a suitable model for threshold testing. This opens the way for developing low-cost tools for threshold testing that will provide high threshold coverage for realistic faults and defects and hence help provide higher yields in future nanoscale processes at low costs.