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.:

US 6966017 B1

PDF
Full Text
Expired
Date of Patent:
Nov. 15, 2005

Filed:

Jun. 18, 2002
Applicant:

Richard J. Evans, Bristol, GB;

Inventor:

Richard J. Evans, Bristol, GB;

Assignee:

Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA (US);

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G11C029/00 ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
Abstract

The benefits of on-chip self testing are widely recognized and include the capability to test at high operating speed and independently of external test equipment timing and accuracy limitations. However caches present difficulties since for testing purposes they are conventionally regarded as separate RAM and CAM arrays. The disclosed test engine tests the cache as a whole (i.e., RAM, CAM and comparators together). In the test mode, cache writes are absolutely addressable, selecting a particular entry in a particular way-set during each operation using line addressing and common tag data. This enables read operations to access a specific cache line as if absolutely addressable based on only a partial address and the known tag setting.


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