Industry Expert Blogs

Once upon a time, ASIC designers were integrating memories in their design (using a memory compiler being part of the design tools provided by the ASIC vendor), then they had to make the memory observable, controllable… and start developing the test program for the function, not a very enthusiastic task (“AAAA” and “5555” and other vectors), look for the test coverage, and try to be creative to reach the expected 99,99% magic number. I agree that this was long time ago, but when looking back to this old time, you realize how powerful is DesignWare Self-Test and Repair (STAR) Memory System from Synopsys, initially developed by Virage Logic. Today we are talking about the version 5 of the tool. Moreover, since the year 2000’s, most of the ASIC vendors are externally sourcing the SRAM compiler (to Virage Logic at that time…), ASIC designer is taking benefit of faster, denser memories with Built-In-Self-Test (BIST) integrated.

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