Testing in VLSI: A survey

As the compactness of VLSI circuits increase, it becomes striking to integrate devoted test logic on a chip. Starting with a general idea of test problems, this survey paper reviews test applications and its terms, common test methods and analyzes the basic test procedure. The concept of Built-in Self-Test (BIST) is introduced and discussed, incentives and architecture principles of BIST are shown. This BIST approach not only offers economic profit but also provides interesting technical opportunities with respect to hierarchical testing and the reprocess of test logic during the application of the circuit. Recently BIST Research is being highly used in wireless transmitter and receiver system for the detection of mismatch and non-linear parameters. Also, BIST Circuit plays an important role in the measurement of bit error rate in the communication system.