Stmicroelectronics International N.v.

Stmicroelectronics Pvt. Ltd.

Satinder Singh Malhi

Arant Agrawal

Venkata Narayanan Srinivasan

Avneep Kumar Goyal

Tripti Gupta

V Srinivasan

Amritanshu Anand

In general, trace and debug logic should not be affected by all functional or destructive resets of a processing system. However, certain events, such as power supply related events may be utilized to reset the trace and debug logic since the trace and debug logic may cease correct operation if the provided power supply is insufficient. In addition, it may be beneficial for a debugger to initiate requests to reset trace and debug logic. Further, fault triggers from critical path monitors may be candidates as a source of reset for the trace and debug circuitry. For example, when critical path monitors trigger a fault, the fault may be from the logic associated with either trace and debug logic or the logic which is being debugged or traced. As such, in some instances both trace and debug circuitry and the processing system may be inoperable and may need to be reset.

Reset circuitry providing independent reset signal for trace and debug logic

A scan chain collects scan chain data from testing of a functional circuit and outputs a scan chain signal containing the scan chain data. A voltage monitor circuit operates to compare a supply voltage against a threshold and assert a reset signal when the supply voltage crosses the threshold. The reset signal resets a flip flop circuit whose output signal controls operation of a logic circuit that blocks passage of the scan chain signal to an integrated circuit probe pad and instead applies a constant logic signal to the probe pad indicating a voltage monitoring error.

Voltage level monitoring of an integrated circuit for production test and debug

A system and method for testing an integrated circuit using methodologies to reduce voltage drop during ATPG and LBIST testing. In one embodiment, delay elements may be added to a clock circuit used to generate the various clock signals that trigger the switching of the various electronic components. In another embodiment, logic circuitry may be added to a clock generation circuit to isolate clock domains in order to enable a clock signal in each clock domain in a specific pattern. In yet another embodiment, capture phases for LBIST testing may be made to be asynchrounous within each capture phase, such that data capture for one LBIST partition may be timed different from other capture phases for other LBIST partitions. Finally, a further embodiment ATPG circuitry may also be partitioned such that logic circuitry only enables one (or less than all) ATPG partition at a time.

System and method for reducing voltage drop during automatic testing of integrated circuits

The present invention provides a method and system for controlling leakage power consumption at a System on Chip (SoC) level during a normal run or a boot-up mode. The leakage power reduction is achieved by incorporating a central programmable controller in the SoC architecture and test structures of idle SoC peripherals to place them into an Absolute Minimum Power consumption state with respect to static and dynamic power.

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Noida, India

Satinder Singh Malhi