RL-huffman encoding for test compression and power reduction in scan applications

  • Authors:
  • Mehrdad Nourani;Mohammad H. Tehranipour

  • Affiliations:
  • The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX;The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES)
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

This article mixes two encoding techniques to reduce test data volume, test pattern delivery time, and power dissipation in scan test applications. This is achieved by using run-length encoding followed by Huffman encoding. This combination is especially effective when the percentage of don't cares in a test set is high, which is a common case in today's large systems-on-chips (SoCs). Our analysis and experimental results confirm that achieving up to an 89&percent; compression ratio and a 93&percent; scan-in power reduction is possible for scan-testable circuits such as ISCAS89 benchmarks.