OLDEVDTP: a novel environment for off-line debugging of VLSI device test programs

Abstract

Today's microelectronics researchers design VLSI devices to achieve highly differentiated devices, both in performance and functionality. As VLSI devices become more complex, VLSI device testing becomes more costly and time consuming. The increasing test complexity leads to longer device test programs development time as well as more expensive test systems, and debugging test programs is a great burden to the test programs development. This paper presents an off-line debugging environment, OLDEVDTP, for the creation, analysis, checking, identifying, error location, and correction of the device test programs off-line from the target VLSI test system, to achieve a dramatic cost and time reduction. Analysis, design, and implementation of OLDEVDTP are addressed in the paper.