MIND: An inside Look at an Expert System for Electronic Diagnosis

Because of its intended purpose, it is very complicated to diagnose faults in VLSI test system hardware. When this problem is considered in the hardware design phase, it is apparent that VLSI test systems need to have built-in self-test features. For a self-test to be of any value, the circuit check program should minimize the hardware involved in each test. MIND is an expert system for VLSI test system diagnosis that integrates the principles of their hierarchical design and experts´ heuristics to achieve a practical approach to reducing test system downtime.