Robust Concurrent Online Testing of Network-on-Chip-Based SoCs

Lifetime concerns for complex systems-on-a-chip (SoC) designs due to decreasing levels in reliability motivate the development of solutions to ensure reliable operation. A precursor to any proposed recovery scheme would require the identification of failures in the system. Non-concurrent in-field testing is an impractical solution due to prohibitive costs in terms of test power and test time. This novel research proposes the use of concurrent online testing (COLT) to circumvent these issues. A test infrastructure-intellectual property (TI-IP) is deployed within network-on-chip (NoC)-based SoC designs to provide online test support while managing intrusion of test into executing applications within the system. This research describes the architecture and operation of a TI-IP capable of COLT. To address scalability of this solution, we show how these would operate when more than one is deployed in an SoC. In the absence of benchmarks for the analysis of COLT, two baseline and eight TI-IP configuration variations within SoC test configurations were developed using application and test benchmarks from the research domain. The power profiles from the NoCSim simulation environment are reported here demonstrating how different configurations of TI-IPs would operate. A robust TI-IP protocol is also specified and possible hazards and their mitigations are identified.