LBIST - A technique for infield safety

Nikhil Garg, Sagar Kataria, Abhishek Mahajan, Anurag Jindal (Freescale Semiconductor)

Introduction

In this modern era, design complexity and size of the SOC is increasing at a very fast pace. Designers are also moving to lower technology nodes to achieve the higher performance targets.

There are defects which may appear during the field operation of device. The infield failures are mainly because of latent faults which may not be apparent or readily detectable while manufacturing testing but may evolve over a period of time or during real time in field application because of environmental conditions.

SOCs used in Automotive and military applications in particular are worst affected as the infield failures in these applications could be life threatening. Stress testing like burn-in though provides a long term predictive stress simulation environment but these are also only limited to a few years due to high test costs involved. In order to meet safety requirements, SOCs should be designed to perform in field testing.

To detect the latent faults the device needs to have a mechanism where it can perform routine tests on itself using software or LBIST based techniques. In software based self-test the device checks its components functionality by providing functional test vectors and reads the response to check the pass or fail status. Software testing could be an option for infield latent fault detection but pattern generation in this case is manual and may not provide sufficient coverage in a given time frame.

Logic Built-in self-test (LBIST) helps to reduce the testing complexity by order of magnitude. Logic- BIST is circuitry embedded in the chip that performs scan based structural test of the design. This technique gives measurement of fault coverage with minimum vectors and helps us overcome drawbacks of the earlier discussed techniques. As shown in the Fig 1, it consists of test patterns generator and a circuit to analyze the output responses of the functional circuitry.

Fig 1: LBIST Circuitry embedded in SOC

In this article, we will be discussing how LBIST testing differs from conventional testing, some important applications of LBIST and design overhead of using LBIST in the design.

Scan v/s LBIST Testing

As shown in the Fig 2a, Scan testing is deterministic ATPG testing where Test patterns are pre-generated using a gate-level representation of the design netlist. Scan testing requires Automated Test Equipment (ATE), which controls the test patterns supplied to the SOC. Patterns are stored in tester memory and scanned into the circuit using parallel scan chains. Also, the coverage target for scan testing is very high (>99% for stuck-at faults and >90% for transition faults)

Fig 2a: Scan testing using deterministic ATPG

On the other hand, LBIST testing (as shown in Fig 2b) is Random ATPG where an on-chip pattern generator feeds the scan chains, an on-chip result compressor compresses the scanned out responses of all patterns into a final signature. Fig2b shows the basic circuit level details of the LBIST. The testing mentioned here is non-deterministic because PRPG which is generating scan vectors here can’t be controlled externally. The LBIST in-field coverage targets for automotive equipment is defined by ISO 26262 using ASIL levels (Automotive Safety integrity Level) which is applicable throughout the lifecycle of all automotive electronic safety-related systems. The coverage targets are different for different safety levels. For example, For ASIL-D type of devices, diagnostic coverage target is greater than that of ASIL-B and ASIL-C type of devices.

Fig 2b: Scan Testing using Random ATPG

Applications of LBIST

Safety for Infield test

For critical applications especially automotive, LBIST testing is generally done. It is not for a one-time production test, but for repeated testing of the SOCs in the field (or "in system" testing) to ensure that a satellite or medical device or a car is working as expected. For example, for an electronically-controlled braking system in the car, LBIST testing is run every time car is turned on. If there is some fault in the device, and output signature is not correct, it actually means logic might have some defects. In that case the car's electronic controls can alert the driver that there is some issue in the system and it might not be safe to drive the car.

The infield testing can be performed in different ways. The test can be triggered by hardware every time the device is switched on (can be termed as offline testing) or it can be triggered by software whenever the application allows the test to run on the fly (can be termed as online testing)

The testing can be used for end of life detection as a reliability test of device by determining number of frequent failures that the device shows over a period of time.

Logic BIST for Scan testing

As shown in Fig 3, many designs which have very large sizes and their scan vector can’t fit into tester memory Logic BIST can be used to achieve test coverage without utilizing much tester memory. Then top of it scan patterns are generated to extract the remaining coverage which can’t be achieved through random ATPG.

Fig 3: Logic BIST for Scan Testing

However it comes with its own challenges, the failure diagnostics with LBIST is not as simple as compared to normal scan patterns. The diagnostics require extra hardware to be implemented in design.

LBIST Overhead

The various advantages of using LBIST come with a cost. There is significant design overhead which if not handled properly can degrade the system performance significantly. The overhead discussed here could be because of

• Area and power overhead because of extra test logic inserted in design
• Timing Overhead because of test logic which is inserted in functional paths to improve test coverage
• Increase in design complexity to support in field testing implementation and verification of associated logic

Conclusion

LBIST testing might increase design complexity but it is ideal for field and system testing throughout the product life cycle, though it can be used for fast manufacturing test bring up and in few cases for scan testing as well in conjunction with normal scan testing as well. LBIST testing is must for safety critical application designs such as automotive. With small area overhead and the ability to achieve desires testing target in limited time, LBIST helps designers to achieve their test goals to ensure a quality silicon.

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