TIGER: testability insertion guidance expert system

An overview is given of a knowledge-based testability insertion guidance expert system (TIGER) that provides designers with a systematic approach for creating complex, testable designs. Specifically, this system identifies testability problems early in the design cycle, formulates a test strategy for the design, does ´what-if´ exploration of DFT (design for testability) solutions, plans the invocation of gate-level test tools on design partitions, and develops a low-cost solution to the test problem that satisfies the design goals and constraints. Also described are the experimental results obtained using the system on several real designs.<>