Acceptable Testing of VLSI Components Which Contain Error Correctors

If a VLSI chip is partitioned into functional units (FU´s) and redundant FU´s are added, error correcting codes maybe employed to increase the yield and/or reliability of the chip. Acceptable testing is defined to be testing the chip with the error corrector functioning, thns obtaining the maximum increase in yield afforded by the error correction. The acceptable testing theorem shows that the use of coding and error correction in conjunction with acceptable testing can significantly increase the yield of VLSI chips without seriously compromising their reliability.