Exhaustive and Near-Exhaustive Memory Testing Techniques and their BIST Implementations

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - 1997
Debaleena Das1, Mark Karpovsky1
1Research Lab. on Design and Testing of Computer Hardware, Boston University, Boston

Tóm tắt

In this work we investigate the problem of detection and location ofsingle and unlinked multiple k-coupling faults in n × 1 random-access memories (RAMs). This fault model covers allcrosstalks between any k cells in n × 1 RAMs. The problem of memory testing has been reduced to the problem of the generationof (n,k-1)-exhaustive backgrounds. We have obtained practical test lengths, for a memory size around 1 M, for detecting up to6-couplings by exhaustive tests and up to 9-couplings bynear-exhaustive tests. The best known test algorithms up to nowprovide for the detection of 5-couplings only in a 1 M memory, usingexhaustive tests. Beyond these parameters, test lengths wereimpractical. Furthermore, our method for generation of(n,k-1)-exhaustive backgrounds yields short test lengths givingrise to considerably shorter testing times than the present mostefficient tests for large n and for k greater than 3. Our test lengths are 50% shorter than other methods for the case of detectingup to 5-couplings in a 1 Mbit RAM. The systematic nature of both ourtests enables us to use a built-in self-test (BIST) scheme, for RAMs, with low hardware overhead. For a 1Mbit memory, the BIST areaoverhead for the detection of 5-couplings is less than 1% for SRAMand 6.8% for a DRAM. For the detection of 9-couplings with 99% or higher probability, the BIST area overhead is less than 0.2% forSRAM and 1.5% for DRAM.

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