Altera Corporation

Jayabrata Ghosh Dastidar

Michael Harms

Kalyana Ravindra Kantipudi

Paul J Tracy

Adam J Wright

Binh Vo

Danh Dang

Dhwani Shah

Andy Louie Lee

Steven Perry

Srinivas Perisetty

Kar Keng Chua

Jun Pin Tan

Hung Hing Anthony Pang

William Y Hata

Jordan Plofsky

Yee Liang Tan

Tze Sin Tan

Zunhang Yu Kasnavi

Siew Ling Yeoh

Alok Shreekant Doshi

Ajay Nagarandal

Chiew Khiang Kuit

Laiq Chughtai

Balaji Natarajan

Aman Aflaki Beni

Sergey Timokhin

Kok Sun Chia

Muhammad Naziri Zakaria

A design-for-test (DFT) circuitry is disclosed. The DFT circuitry includes a first multiplexer operable to transfer one of a clock signal or an inverted clock signal based on a clock polarity control signal. The DFT circuitry also includes a burst counter coupled to the first multiplexer. The burst counter is operable to output a signal at a first logic state for a predefined pulse count. The DFT circuitry also includes a second multiplexer that is operable to output one of the clock polarity control signal or the clock signal according to a signal output from the burst counter. The DFT circuitry may also include a third multiplexer that forwards control signals identifying the predefined pulse count to the burst counter from different sources such as an external pin, a programmable interconnect, and a memory element.

Clock control circuitry and methods of utilizing the clock control circuitry

A device tester is provided. The device tester includes a probe card and a substrate coupled to the probe card. The substrate has a plurality of layers for routing a signal. An integrated circuit is coupled to the substrate. The integrated circuit is operable to transmit an input signal received from a testing apparatus to a device under test through the substrate to a signal probe. The signal probe is further operable to receive a test signal from the device under test in response to the input signal, wherein the integrated circuit is operable to amplify the test signal, and transmit the amplified test signal to the testing apparatus.

Method and apparatus for die testing

A programmable integrated circuit may contain multiple logic blocks. Computing equipment may be used to run automated tools that process a design for the programmable integrated circuit to perform corresponding circuit tests. A translation tool may translate a transistor-level description of circuitry on the programmable integrated circuit into a gate-level description. A block-level test configuration data generation tool may generate block-level test configuration data files. The test configuration data files may be used as constraints for an automatic test pattern generation tool that produces block-level test vectors. A full-chip propagation tool may use the block-level test vectors, block-level test configuration data files, and full-chip constraints to produce corresponding full-chip test configuration data and full-chip test vectors for testing the integrated circuit. A translation tool may convert the configuration data and test vectors into a tester file.

Automatic test pattern generation system for programmable logic devices

Integrated circuits (ICs) with configurable test pins and a method of testing an IC are disclosed. An IC has input/output (I/O) pins that can be configured either as a test input pin, a test output pin or a user I/O pin. Selector circuits are used to selectively route and couple the I/O pins to various logic blocks and test circuitry on the IC. Selector circuits are also used to selectively couple either a user output or a test output to different I/O pins on the IC. Switches are used to configure the selector circuits and route test signals within the IC. Different configurations of the switches determine how the signals are routed. Test input signals from an I/O pin may be routed to any test circuitry within the IC and test output signals from a test circuit may be routed to any I/O pin on the IC.

Integrated circuit with configurable test pins

An integrated circuit is provided with built-in-self test circuitry. The integrated circuit may have multiple blocks of memory. The memory may be tested using the built-in-self test circuitry. Each memory block may include a satellite address generator that is used in generating test addresses for the memory blocks. Each memory block may also include failure analysis logic and output response analyzer logic. Stalling logic may be used to individually stall memory block testing on a block-by-block basis during memory tests. Address buffer circuitry such as first-in-first-out buffers may be used to provide randomized memory addresses during testing.

Area-efficient memory built-in-self-test circuitry with advanced debug capabilities for distributed memory blocks

An integrated circuit may have a circuit under test. The integrated circuit may have a clock generation circuit that receives a reference clock from a tester and that generates a corresponding core clock. The integrated circuit may have a built in self test circuit and a clock synthesizer that receives the core clock. The built in self test circuit may provide clock synthesizer control signals that direct the clock synthesizer to produce test clock signals at various test clock frequencies. The test clock at the test clock frequencies may be applied to the circuit under test during circuit testing. The circuit under test may assert a pass signal when the circuit tests are completed successfully. The built in self test circuit may inform the tester of the maximum clock frequency at which the circuit under test successfully passes testing.

Logic circuit testing with reduced overhead

Built-in self test techniques for testing circuit blocks on integrated circuits are provided. A BIST controller is provided on-chip to test two or more circuit blocks. High routing congestion is avoided by loading test data into the circuit blocks through scan chain segments that run continuously along the inputs and outputs of the circuit blocks. The BIST controller takes control of the scan chain segments during test and has the ability to partition the scan chains at specified intervals.

Method and apparatus for routing efficient built-in self test for on-chip circuit blocks

A programmable integrated circuit has multiple power supply voltages. Power supply voltages are distributed using power supply distribution lines. The integrated circuit has programmable power supply voltage selection switches. Each power supply voltage selection switch has its inputs connected to the power supply distribution lines and supplies a selected power supply voltage to a circuit block at its output. Test circuits are provided for testing the power supply voltage selection switches. During testing, the power supply voltage selection switches are adjusted to produce various power supply voltages at their outputs. The test circuit associated with each switch performs voltage comparisons to determine whether the switch is functioning properly. Each test circuit produces a test result based on its voltage comparison. The test results from the test circuits are provided to a scan chain, which unloads the test results from the integrated circuit to a tester for analysis.

Testing circuitry for programmable logic devices with selectable power supply voltages

A scan testing technique in which test data is pipelined to scan logic within an integrated circuit. In system on a programmable chip (SOPC) designs, pipelines are easily built in the programmable logic device (PLD) logic by configuring programmable interconnects to connect registers in a pipelined manner so that test data can be pipelined to scan the logic under test. In system on a chip (SOC) designs, a smart test generator-analyzer is configured to recursively extract pipeline information from a design-so that test data can be pipelined to scan the logic under test. Generally, test data is pipelined using existing functional logic and/or scan chains. Furthermore, a failure analysis (FA) platform is described. The FA platform is operable to take as its input a failing vector as well as a pipelined scan vector and unroll the pipeline sequence to determine which vector caused the failure.

Pipelined scan structures for testing embedded cores

Integrated circuits such as programmable logic device integrated circuits are provided that have memory arrays. The memory arrays can be tested using configurable built in self test circuitry. The built in self test circuitry may have test control register circuitry and configurable state machine logic. The state machine logic may perform at-speed tests on a memory array and may provide test results to external equipment for analysis. A tester may be used to provide test control settings to the test control register circuitry. The test control settings may include march element settings for a march sequence. During testing, the configurable state machine logic may use the march element settings to generate march sequences. March sequences that have been generated in this way may be used in testing the memory array.

Configurable built in self test circuitry for testing memory arrays

A technique and device for testing integrated circuits is implemented by comparing similar test outputs for differences. One particular type of integrated circuit that may benefit from this method of testing is a programmable logic integrated circuit. Separate logic units in the integrated circuit receive test patterns and generate outputs based on the test patterns. A comparator is then used to compare the outputs. If one output differs from the other outputs, an error message is created and test result information is stored in memory for use in pinpointing the cause of the error signal. In other embodiments, a microprocessor or embedded processor core may be configured to provide test patterns or used for comparison of the test pattern outputs.

Method and apparatus for testing integrated circuits

Techniques are provided that control the generation of test routes to improve the ability of a test system to isolate defects on programmable circuits. A test generator creates test routes that test the horizontal resources. In these test routes, the inputs of each circuit element are only connected to other circuit elements in the same row. Test routes are also generated to test the vertical resources. Each of theses test routes is allowed to make only one transition from between two different rows of circuit elements. The configuration generator includes a post processor that ensures all source drivers in the test routes connect to at least two sinks.

Automatic test configuration generation facilitating repair of programmable circuits

A programmable logic device test generation tool is provided that produces test configuration data and test vectors for testing programmable logic device integrated circuits. A graph generation tool converts a netlist or other circuit description of a programmable logic device integrated circuit into a graph having nodes and edges. A timing analysis tool may be used to help produce test constraints. Based on the test constraints, an automatic test generator processes the graph to produce the test configuration data and test vectors. In processing the graph with the automatic test generator, the graph may be divided into multiple testable subgraphs. Each subgraph may be processed using an iterative approach in which a cost function threshold is adjusted in a number of steps until a target test coverage is obtained or processing saturates.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Jayabrata Ghosh Dastidar