Hierarchical SoC testing scheduling based on the ant colony algorithm

SoC testing scheduling is an NP hard problem, and it is more complex for the hierarchical SoC architecture. By formulating the SoC testing scheduling problem as a 2-D bin-packing model, this paper solves the problem for the hierarchical SoC with the ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to reduce testing application time. Experimental results on ITC'02 benchmark circuits show that the ACO algorithm is more effective than earlier proposed methods.