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ECE 597

Testing of Digital Systems

According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS-2008 update), for more than four decades, the semiconductor industry has distinguish itself by the rapid pace of improvements in its products. However, the cost of the increased functionality of components, circuits, and ultimately systems, is the requirement of more verification and test of the electronic products.

In many digital application domains the verification of the design has become the predominant component of a project’s development in terms of time, cost and the human resources dedicated to it.

In current projects, verification engineers outnumber designers, with the ratio reaching two or three to one for the most complex designs. Problems associated with digital logic testing have existed for as long as digital logic itself has existed. Industry indicates a severe shortage of test engineers because few universities have test engineering courses to address this need.

Catalog Description: Introduction to testing; Test economics; Automatic Testing Equipment; Fault Modeling; Testing Algorithms for Combinational and Sequential circuits; Design for Testability.

Course objectives

To understand the concept of electronic testing
To understand techniques for generating tests for faults in combinational and sequential circuits and automated techniques for evaluating those tests.
To understand techniques that can be used by the designer to make testing a circuit for faults possible and economical.
To learn techniques for building in test capability in a circuit.

Required Textbook: Bushnell, and V. D. Agrawal, “Essential of Electronic Testing for Digital, Memory and Mixed Signal VLSI Circuits”, Boston: Springer, 2005, ISBN 0-7923-7991-8; this printing includes corrections over the 2000, 2001 and 2004, 2006 printings by Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Other recommended books:

M. Burns and Gordon Roberts “An Introduction to Mixed Signal IC Test and Measurement” , Oxford University press, 2001.

. Abramovici, M. A. Breuer, and A. D. Friedman, Digital System Testing and Testable Design, IEEE Press, New York, 1990

Niraj JHA and Sandeep Gupta , “Testing of Digital Systems”, Cambridge University Press, 2003

Laboratory: You will use an industrial class Automatic Test Euipment (ATE) to perform various testing procedures on combinational Digital circuits of medium complexity. The equipment is ETS 364 Eagle Test System.

PREREQUISITES: The course is directed at graduate or advanced senior students. The prerequisites are ECE 333 or ECE 232 with either a grade of B or better, consent of instructor, or graduate standing. Basic knowledge of C++ is recommended.