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Atpg Low Power

This document discusses a shift power effort feature introduced in TetraMAX to generate low-power ATPG patterns. Simulation results showed the feature reduced average shift switching activity by at least 50% and peak activity by 30% with acceptable pattern inflation. Silicon tests found shift frequency increased 10% with no IR-drop effects and same behavior for low, medium, and high effort values as simulation. The feature provides good benefits but improvements are needed to better control switching activity levels.

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322 views11 pages

Atpg Low Power

This document discusses a shift power effort feature introduced in TetraMAX to generate low-power ATPG patterns. Simulation results showed the feature reduced average shift switching activity by at least 50% and peak activity by 30% with acceptable pattern inflation. Silicon tests found shift frequency increased 10% with no IR-drop effects and same behavior for low, medium, and high effort values as simulation. The feature provides good benefits but improvements are needed to better control switching activity levels.

Uploaded by

prawinv
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Generating low-power ATPG

patterns using a shift power budget

Pascal BLANC
STEricsson
OUTLINE

• Case study
• Current low-power adjacent fill
• Shift power effort feature
• Experimental work
– simulation
– silicon
• Conclusions

Pascal BLANC

2
CASE STUDY

• Application: Baseband
• Technology: 65 nm
• Complexity: 280,000 FFs
• Scan configuration:
– DFTMax compression
– 17 test clock domains
– 65 external channels
– 3276 internal scan chains
– 89 Flip-Flops per scan chain in compression mode
Pascal BLANC

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CURRENT LOW-POWER ADJACENT FILL (1/2)

• Exists in TetraMAX since several releases

Pascal BLANC

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CURRENT LOW-POWER ADJACENT FILL (2/2)

• Advantages
– Reduce the average switching
activity in shift mode
– Easy to setup

• Improvements required
– More effective in a compression
mode
– First patterns less “power-
hungry”
– Reduce peak switching activity in
shift mode
– Control the adjacent fill efficiency

Pascal BLANC

5
SHIFT POWER EFFORT FEATURE

• Introduced in TetraMAX d-2010.03 (LCA)

• Command :
set_atpg –fill adjacent \
–shift_power_effort {low|medium|high}

• Care bits differently treated

Pascal BLANC

6
EXPERIMENTAL WORK – SIMULATION (1/2)

• Single stuck-at fault model

– CPU time and test coverage not affected


– Pattern number inflation acceptable for the “low” value
– Average shift switching activity reduced at least by 50%
– Peak shift switching activity reduced at least by 30%

Pascal BLANC

7
EXPERIMENTAL WORK – SIMULATION (2/2)

• No peaks in the first patterns


• Switching activity gap in the middle of the set of patterns
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EXPERIMENTAL WORK – SILICON

• Marginalities due to the IR-drop effects disappeared


• Shift frequency increased by about 10%
• Same silicon behavior for the 3 different power effort values as
the simulation Pascal BLANC

9
CONCLUSIONS

• Good benefits :
– Significant shift switching activity reduction (average and peak)
– Increase the scan shift frequency on silicon
– Possibility to control the switching activity
– No excessive peak power consumption in the first test vectors
– No DFT feature nor basic design modifications needed

• Improvements needed :
– Huge difference between the high case and the low and medium ones
– Switching activity not constant during the overall set of patterns

• Usage deeply deployed internally to ST and ST-Ericsson

Pascal BLANC

10
End

Thanks for your attention

Pascal BLANC

11

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