Built-in current testing-feasibility study

A testing methodology which applies built-in current sensors to detect abnormal currents in the power buses of functional blocks of CMOS ICs is proposed, that significantly improves the quality of VLSI circuit testing. A summary of simulation results and design experiments is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and to illustrate the applicability of the approach. The results suggest that built-in current testing could be a very powerful tool for overcoming basic bottlenecks in VLSI testing, providing very inexpensive testing, high-quality built-in testing, or on-chip concurrent reliability testing for high-quality fault-tolerant systems.< >