Diagnosing multicycle faults and/or defects with single cycle atpg test patterns

Abstract

An integrated circuit (IC) test engine generates single cycle test patterns for testing for candidate faults and/or defects of a first set of static faults and/or defects of an IC design. A diagnostics engine receives single cycle test result data characterizing application of the single cycle test patterns to a fabricated IC chip based on the IC design and fault-simulates a subset of the single cycle test patterns against a fault model that includes multicycle faults and/or defects utilizing sim-shifting to diagnose a second set of static faults and/or defects in the fabricated IC chip that are only detectable with multicycle test patterns. The diagnostics engine further scores candidate faults and/or defects in the first set of static faults and/or defects and the second set of static faults and/or defects for applicable test patterns to determine a most likely fault and/or defect present in the fabricated IC chip.