The general trend in industry is to get designs right first time. This philosophy needs to be extended to testing. HIT, currently being developed at the University of Oxford, falls under a new breed of test generating systems that will ensure that this is achieved. It not only provides efficient test generation but can also guide the designer through various design for test modifications. Any extra circuitry is targetted at the correct location thereby reducing cost, hardware overhead and the effect on circuit performance. It must not be assumed that the modifications suggested by HIT are the only ones or that they are necessarily the best. The idea of designing such a system is to try and create a dialogue between the designer and the test expert. By giving the designer expert knowledge about the areas of his design where testing would be difficult he is always in a better position to suggest alternative solutions. Also conferring with the designer is more important than using arbitrary measures to improve the testability of a circuit. Finally, even though the designer is in the best position to modify the design to improve testability, having a system such as HIT to guide him/her will reduce the effort required and in most cases improve the final product.

Inspec keywords: integrated circuit testing

Other keywords: HIT; hierarchical integrated test methodology; designer expert knowledge; integrated circuit testing

Subjects: Digital circuit design, modelling and testing