Layout-driven detection of bridge faults in interconnects

This paper presents a new approach to fault detection of interconnects; the novelty of the proposed approach is that test generation and scheduling are established using the physical characteristics of the layout of the interconnect under test. This includes critical area extraction and a realistic fault model for a structural methodology. Physical layout information is used to model the adjacencies in an interconnect and possible bridge faults by a novel weighted graph approach. This graph is then analyzed to appropriately schedule the order of test compaction and execution for (early) detection of bridge faults. Generation and compaction of the test vectors are accomplished by calculating node and edge weights of the new adjacency graph as figure of merit. The advantage of the proposed approach is that on average, early detection of faults is possible using a number of tests significantly smaller than with previous approaches. A further advantage is that it represents a realistic alternative to adaptive testing because it avoids costly on-line test generation, while still requiring a small number of vectors