Lessons from at-speed scan deployment on an Intel® Itanium® microprocessor

Abstract

Lessons learnt during the deployment of transition scan content on an Intel® Itanium® server microprocessor design and its use for electrical debug and defect screening in high-volume manufacturing are described. While many publications in the area of transition scan show it being practiced as an efficient defect screening tool, only a minority of these designs were high-performance microprocessor designs. This work illustrates the benefits of such techniques on complex microprocessors.