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Scan architecture with mutually exclusive scan segment activation for shift and capture power reduction

Scan architecture with mutually exclusive scan segment activation for shift and capture power reduction
Scan architecture with mutually exclusive scan segment activation for shift and capture power reduction
Power dissipation during scan testing is becoming an important concern as design sizes and gate densities increase. While several approaches have been recently proposed for reducing power dissipation during the shift cycle (minimum transition don't care fill, special scan cells and scan chain partitioning), very little work has been carried out towards reducing the peak power during test response capture and the few existing approaches for reducing capture power rely on complex ATPG algorithms. This paper proposes a scan architecture with mutually exclusive scan segment activation which overcomes the shortcomings of previous approaches. The proposed architecture achieves both shift and capture power reduction with no impact on the performance of the design, and with minimal impact on area and testing time (typically 2-3%). An algorithmic procedure for assigning flip-flips to scan segments enables reuse of test patterns generated by standard ATPG tools. An implementation of the proposed method had been integrated into an automated design flow using commercial synthesis and simulation tools which was used on a wide range of benchmark designs. Reductions up to 57% in average power, and up to 44% and 34% in peak power dissipation during shift and capture cycles, respectively, were obtained when using two scan segments. Increasing the number of scan segments to six leads to reductions of 96% and 80% in average power and respectively maximum number of simultaneous transitions.
1142-1153
Rosinger, Paul
b4dae52c-aeb6-4e07-8a63-d6deaae76ef2
Al-Hashimi, Bashir
0b29c671-a6d2-459c-af68-c4614dce3b5d
Nicolici, Nicola
61efa5a6-7da8-4c33-8e68-2679a9bb0871
Rosinger, Paul
b4dae52c-aeb6-4e07-8a63-d6deaae76ef2
Al-Hashimi, Bashir
0b29c671-a6d2-459c-af68-c4614dce3b5d
Nicolici, Nicola
61efa5a6-7da8-4c33-8e68-2679a9bb0871

Rosinger, Paul, Al-Hashimi, Bashir and Nicolici, Nicola (2004) Scan architecture with mutually exclusive scan segment activation for shift and capture power reduction. IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design, 23 (7), 1142-1153.

Record type: Article

Abstract

Power dissipation during scan testing is becoming an important concern as design sizes and gate densities increase. While several approaches have been recently proposed for reducing power dissipation during the shift cycle (minimum transition don't care fill, special scan cells and scan chain partitioning), very little work has been carried out towards reducing the peak power during test response capture and the few existing approaches for reducing capture power rely on complex ATPG algorithms. This paper proposes a scan architecture with mutually exclusive scan segment activation which overcomes the shortcomings of previous approaches. The proposed architecture achieves both shift and capture power reduction with no impact on the performance of the design, and with minimal impact on area and testing time (typically 2-3%). An algorithmic procedure for assigning flip-flips to scan segments enables reuse of test patterns generated by standard ATPG tools. An implementation of the proposed method had been integrated into an automated design flow using commercial synthesis and simulation tools which was used on a wide range of benchmark designs. Reductions up to 57% in average power, and up to 44% and 34% in peak power dissipation during shift and capture cycles, respectively, were obtained when using two scan segments. Increasing the number of scan segments to six leads to reductions of 96% and 80% in average power and respectively maximum number of simultaneous transitions.

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More information

Published date: July 2004
Organisations: Electronic & Software Systems

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 258752
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/258752
PURE UUID: 4bc72faf-d7f5-48ca-ab9f-15e8a1566abb

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Date deposited: 12 Nov 2004
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 06:12

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Contributors

Author: Paul Rosinger
Author: Bashir Al-Hashimi
Author: Nicola Nicolici

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