Fault detection and diagnosis of interconnects of random access memories

This paper presents two new approaches for testing interconnects of random access memories (RAM). The first algorithm is referred to as the Adaptive Diagnosis Algorithm (ADA), while the second algorithm is referred to as the Consecutive Diagnosis Algorithm (CDA). Initially, it is shown that the diagnosis of the address lines is the most difficult step in interconnect testing of memories as the diagnosis of faults in data lines can be resolved easily. The execution of ADA is such that the diagnosis of the address lines is performed sequentially (i.e. on a line by line basis), while enforcing the conditions by which it is possible to differentiate for each line a stuck-at fault from a short. This is determined by the operations as for diagnosis a short requires an additional READ compared with a stuck-at fault. A different condition in the generation of the overall sequence is utilized in CDA; by using different test patterns for the address lines, a relation can be assessed between consecutive READ operations.