Sequential circuit testability enhancement using a nonscan approach

Recent studies show that a stuck-at test applied at the operational speed of the circuit identifies more defective chips than a test having the same fault coverage but applied at a lower speed. Design-for-testability approaches based on full scan, partial scan, or silicon-based solutions such as CrossCheck achieve very high stuck-at fault coverage. However, in all these cases, the tests have to be applied at speeds lower than the operation speed. In this work, we investigate various design-for-testability (DFT) techniques for sequential circuits that permit at-speed application of tests while providing for very high fault coverage. The method involves parallel loading of flip-flops in test mode for enhanced controllability combined with probe point insertion for enhanced observability. Fault coverage and ATG effectiveness improved to greater than 96% and 99.7%, respectively, for the ISCAS89 sequential benchmark circuits studied when these nonscan DFT techniques were used. The average area overhead for the nonscan DFT enhancements was 9.9% for standard cell implementations of three circuits synthesized from high-level descriptions, compared to 20.2% for full scan. ATG effectiveness improved to greater than 99.3% for all three circuits with the nonscan DFT enhancements.<>