Improving on-line BIST-based diagnosis for roving STARs

Abstract

We present improvements to our on-line BIST-based diagnosis technique originally used in the roving STARs approach. The enhanced technique starts with a new method of analyzing the BIST results, and employs the original divide-and-conquer method as a second phase only when the first phase fails or it does not achieve maximum diagnostic resolution. The combined technique significantly reduces the diagnosis time, improves the resolution in several cases, and also requires less fault-free resources.