A test method for delay faults in NoC interconnects

Network-on-Chip (NoC) delay faults can only be detected when NoC works at normal operating speed, so it is very hard to test such faults. In this paper, we propose a method for at-speed testing of delay faults in NoC interconnects. Based on the NoC delay fault model, we first formulate the problems of the NoC delay faults. Then, we propose a delay test method for NoC data transfer through handshaking and add an extra hardware respectively on the transmitter and the receiver as test circuits, achieving the automatic testing of the delay faults. Finally, the analysis shows that the proposed method guarantees that all the good chips will not be detected as faulty, avoiding the waste of chip resources.