An efficient wrapper scan chain configuration method for network-on-chip testing

Network-on-Chip (NoC) is the new paradigm for core-based system design. Reuse of the on-chip communication network for testing cores in a NoC-based system is critical to reduce test cost for this new architecture. However, many new challenging issues come up correspondingly. In this paper, we propose a test data transportation method with multiple data flit formats and a novel scan chain configuration method to maximize the utilization of the on-chip network channel without adding too much hardware overhead. Experimental results on ITC'02 benchmarks show that the new wrapper scan chain configuration method (with the aid of multiple data flit formats) leads to substantial reduction in network channel waste, and thus results in a significant overall reduction of time and energy for testing the entire system. The test wrapper architecture that supports the new method of test data transportation is very simple, and has been verified by VHDL simulation.