Arithmetic built-in self-test for DSP cores

A new built-in self-test (BIST) methodology is presented in which all generation and compaction functions are executed by basic building blocks such as adders, ALU's, and multipliers, performing regular arithmetic functions in digital signal processing (DSP) cores. It is demonstrated how these components are themselves tested, and subsequently used to perform more complex testing functions. The need for extra hardware is either entirely eliminated or drastically reduced, test vectors can be easily distributed to different modules of the system, test responses can be collected in parallel, and there is virtually no performance degradation. As an integral part of the proposed BIST environment, arithmetic two-dimensional (2-D) generators of pseudorandom test vectors are also introduced to further integrate the scheme with parallel scan and boundary scan designs used to test peripheral devices of the core.