Narrow Results

This paper presents an efficient method to determine minimum system-on-chip (SOC) test schedules with precedence and power constraints based on simulated annealing. The problem is solved using a partitioned testing scheme with run to completion that minimizes the number of idle test slots. The method can handle SOC test scheduling with and without power constraints in addition to precedence constraints that preserve desirable orderings among tests. We present experimental results for various SOC examples that demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. The method achieved optimal test schedules in all attempted cases in a short CPU time.

System-on-chip (SOC) has become a mainstream design practice that integrates intellectual property cores on a single chip. The SOC test scheduling problem maximizes the simultaneous test of all cores by determining the order in which various cores are tested. The problem is tightly coupled with the test access mechanism (TAM) bandwidth and wrapper design. This paper presents a strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm for the SOC test scheduling problem with the objective of minimizing the power-constrained test application time, wrapper design and TAM assignment in flat and hierarchical core-based systems. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method using the ITC’02 benchmarks.