Test of future system-on-chips

Abstract

Spurred by technology leading to the availability of millions of gates per chip, system-level integration is evolving as a new paradigm, allowing entire systems to be built on a single chip. Being able to rapidly develop, manufacture, test, debug and verify complex SOCs is crucial for the continued success of the electronics industry. This growth is expected to continue full force at least for the next decade, while making possible the production of multimillion transistor chips. However, to make its production practical and cost effective, the industry road maps identify a number of major hurdles to be overcome. The key hurdle is related to test and diagnosis. This embedded tutorial analyzes these hurdles, relates them to the advancements in semiconductor technology and presents potential solutions to address them. These solutions are meant to ensure that test and diagnosis contribute to the overall growth of the SOC industry and do not slow it down. This embedded tutorial in addition presents the state-of-the-art in system-level integration and addresses the strategies and current industrial practices in the test of system-on-chip. It discusses the requirements for test reuse in hierarchical design, such as embedded test strategies for individual cores, test access mechanisms, optimizing test resource partitioning, and embedded test management and integration at the System-on-Chip level. Processor cores being one of the most common cores embedded in a SOC, issues related to self-testing embedded processor cores are addressed. Future research challenges and opportunities are discussed in enabling testing of future SOCs which use deep submicron technologies.