Low power testing of VLSI circuits: problems and solutions

Power and energy consumption of digital systems may increase significantly during testing. This extra power consumption due to test application may give rise to severe hazards to the circuit reliability. Moreover, it may be responsible for cost, performance verification as well as technology related problems and can dramatically shorten the battery life when on-line testing is considered. In this paper, we present a survey of the low power testing techniques that can be used to test VLSI systems. In the first part, the paper explains the problems induced by the increased power consumed during functional testing of a circuit, in either external testing or built-in self-test (BIST). Next, we survey state-of-the-art techniques that exist to reduce this power/energy consumption during test mode and allow non-destructive testing of the device under test.