Predictive Techniques for Projecting Test Data Volume Compression

Test data compression is widely employed in scan design to tackle high test data volume (TDV) and test time problems. Given the number of scan-in pins available in automated test equipment, architectural decisions regarding the number of internal scan chains directly impact the compression level attained. While targeting an aggressive compression level by increasing the number of internal scan chains would reduce the TDV per encodable pattern, the cost of serially applying more patterns to restore the coverage loss offsets the compression benefits. Following up from our earlier work, we propose here a wide spectrum of predictive techniques for projecting the test cost of a given scan configuration for combinational XOR-based decompression. The appropriate technique is selected by designers based on which stage the design is in, the design abstraction and the amount of information available, the permissible computational complexity of the techniques, and the accuracy of the projected optimal compression ratio.