Software-Based Self-Test Strategy for Data Cache Memories Embedded in SoCs

Testing SoC is a challenging task, especially when addressing complex and high- frequency devices. Among the different techniques that can be exploited, software-based selft-test (SBST) emerged as an effective solution, due some advantages it provides (no HW changes, at- speed testing, re-usability); however, the method requires effective techniques for generating suitable test programs. In this paper we face the issue of generating programs to test data caches (in particular their control part): a method is proposed, and some experimental results are provided to assess its effectiveness.