Testing micropipelined asynchronous circuits

Despite advances in the design of asynchronous circuits, little progress has been made in their testing or design for testability. This work proposes a new strategy for testing micropipelines, by treating the asynchronous elements, such as the C-element, as atomic state elements for testing purposes. By treating asynchronous elements as finite state machines, tests for these can be generated that verify their correct operation and also detect nearly all testable faults in the circuit. Design for testability methods for a micropipeline are also presented that reduce the amount of hardware added to the design while increasing its overall testability compared to other micropipeline testing methods.