A Robust Protocol for Concurrent On-Line Test (COLT) of NoC-based Systems-on-a-Chip

Concurrent on-line testing (COLT) of complex systems-on-a-chip (SoC) designs under lowering noise margins and degrading lifetimes of on-chip components, provides the ideal solution for the monitoring of system health while managing intrusion into executing applications. Deploying test infrastructure-IPs (TI-IPs) into designs has demonstrated the feasibility of using COLT in SoCs. Identifying potential hazards and ensuring correct operation of COLT is critical to providing reliable health monitoring. With the emergence of networks-on-a-chip (NoC) as communication infrastructures not only suitable for application related on-chip communication, but also test access mechanisms to on-chip cores, the experimental setup in this research, deploys TI-IP in a NoC environment and demonstrates TI-IP operation, its communication protocol specification and other related costs.