Advanced Methods for Testing VLSI Components

All methods for testing VLSI components are based on design for testability. Since VLSI complexity necessitates the utilization of regular design structures the emphasis of this paper is on how to exploit regularity in order to obtain easily testable components. Besides memories which are not considered here, the most important regular structures are programmable logic arrays (PLAs). Great effort has been spent on designing testable PLAs. The tendency is now towards universal test sets and self-test. Of equal importance are bit-sliced architectures. Applying the well-founded theory of iterative logic arrays (ILAs) to bit slices has produced yery promising results. Self-test is entering this area, too. An example of a 32-bit execution unit combining bit-sliced architecture and self-test concludes this paper.