An Integrated Approach for Improving Compression and Diagnostic Properties of Test Sets

Abstract

Diagnosis is extremely important to ramp up the yield during the integrated circuit manufacturing process. It reduces the time to market and product cost. High-volume diagnosis has become crucial for yield learning. The backbone of any diagnosis algorithm is the test set in use. Application of test sets for high-volume testing is typically done in test data compression environment to reduce the test time and also the amount of data stored on the tester. For high-volume diagnosis, it is essential to use test sets having high diagnostic power in compression environment. In this work, a novel method has been proposed which combines test data compression and diagnostic power improvement algorithms. Selective Huffman coding is used as the basic test data compression scheme. To improve diagnostic power of a test set we make use of filling algorithms designed to increase the diagnostic ability of the test set.