On simultaneous shift- and capture-power reduction in linear decompressor-based test compression environment

Abstract

Growing test data volume and excessive test power consumption in scan-based testing are both serious concerns for the semiconductor industry. Various test data compression (TDC) schemes and low-power X-filling techniques were proposed to address the above problems. These methods, however, exploit the very same “don't-care” bits in the test cubes to achieve different objectives and hence may contradict to each other. In this work, we propose a generic framework for test power reduction in linear decompressor-based test compression environment, which is able to effectively reduce shift-and capture-power simultaneously. Experimental results on benchmark circuits demonstrate that our proposed techniques significantly outperform existing solutions.