IC Testing by Phase Classification Based on Behavioral Description of RTL

The growing complexity of integrated circuits (ICs) is driving the trend of IC testing towards testing based on behavioral descriptions of register-transfer level (RTL). A behavioral description contains an algorithmic specification of functionality of design. It may contain little or even no information about the design’s cycle-by-cycle behavior or structural implementation. However, it usually has an interior variable to lead the process of its functional phases. This interior variable is named phase variable. The functional behavior of a digital circuit changes according to different values of a phase variable. By analyzing some ITC99 benchmark circuits, this paper presents a way to generate tests for a circuit by tracing the value change of a phase variable in the circuit.