An HDL approach to board-level BIST

Boundary scan is now the most promising technology for testing high-complexity printed circuit boards. The number of BST components available to board-level designers is, however, still restricted, limiting the achievable fault coverage. The requirements to improve board-level testability are analyzed, and a corresponding set of testability blocks is proposed. A high flexibility and reduced cost solution is described, which implements these blocks on medium-complexity PLDs (programmable logic devices), using a simple and powerful HDL (hardware design language)