Logic-AAA: Debug of Logic Failures with an on-ATE Expert System

Debug of failing tests during new product introduction is a human-time-intensive task, requiring the focus of domain experts to develop and execute fact-finding experiments. In particular, complex failures in logic circuitry can be challenging to localize and characterize. The prior AAA (Automated, On-ATE AI) Debug Expert System operated on scan chain failures, using various debug methodologies to identify key information about the failure. This paper proposes Logic-AAA, an extension to AAA that uses the same framework to target failures in digital logic based on structural tests. Among the methods implemented in this system are failing flop identification for determining failure location, exhaustive backcone testing for determining failure behavior, and cross-voltage rail shmoo collection for determining test condition behavior. Logic-AAA can perform expert-like debug tasks in an automated fashion, which leads to significant resource savings and enables non-experts to perform complex debug.