The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 28, 1996
Filed:
Sep. 27, 1993
Applicant:
Inventors:
Pranav N Ashar, Princeton, NJ (US);
Sharad Malik, Princeton, NJ (US);
Assignee:
NEC USA, Inc., Princeton, NJ (US);
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
395500 ; 364488 ; 371 223 ;
Abstract
In partial scan testing of integrated circuits, for an arbitrary graph of an integrated circuit, a Boolean function is derived whose satisfying assignments directly correspond to feedback vertex sets of the graph. The Boolean function is then used for determining the minimum cost feedback vertex set. Boolean function representation using Binary Decision Diagrams (BDI)) in logic synthesis is used to solve the problem of representing the Boolean function efficiently, even for large graphs. The determined minimum cost feedback vertex set is used to select those memory elements in the integrated circuit comprising the scan chain.