Unified Compression and LBIST in a Physically Aware Environment

Scan compression is a critical technology for addressing the rapid rise of test cost without sacrificing coverage requirements. It has become widely adopted throughout the semiconductor industry but is facing challenges. The rise of safety-critical semiconductors demands not just high coverage, but also the ability to verify that the design is working in the field. Traditional approaches have used discrete scan compression and LBIST, as shown by Figure 1. Issues with additional area overhead and routing congestion limit the effectiveness of this architecture.