A reconfigurable broadcast scan compression scheme using relaxation based test vector decomposition

An effective reconfigurable broadcast scan compression scheme that employs test set partitioning and relaxationbased test vector decomposition is proposed. Given a constraint on the number of tester channels, the technique classifies the test set into acceptable and bottleneck vectors. The bottleneck vectors are then decomposed into a set of vectors that meet the given constraint. The acceptable and decomposed test vectors are partitioned into the smallest number of partitions while satisfying the tester channels constraint to reduce the decompressor area. Thus, the technique by construction satisfies a given tester channels constraint at the expense of increased test vector count and number of partitions, offering a tradeoff between test compression, test application time and test decompression circuitry area. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique achieves better compression ratios compared to other test compression techniques.