Design-for-test (DfT) study on a current mode DAC

摘要

The integration of design-for-test (DfT) features into complexnintegrated circuits (ICs) to support exhaustive, fast, and thereforeneconomic testing is becoming crucial to the manufacturing process. Thenauthors investigate the effectiveness of two different test strategiesnfor a current-mode digital-to-analogue converter (DAC) and DfT methodsnfor optimising the design at the transistor level. The first approach isna standard functional test; the second, a novel parametric test strategynwith on-chip support. Both strategies are supplemented by an Issqn screen for the digital components. The evaluation process used toncompare the effectiveness of these two test strategies shows that bothnapproaches result in similar fault coverage figures and a number ofnsimple circuit level design changes can enhance the fault coverage andnreduce the size of the test set