Digital Integrated Circuit Test Vector Input Method Research And Software Implementation

With the development of digital integrated circuit chip design technology andmanufacturing process’s improvement, more and more electronic products are growingto be much smaller and highly centralized. Many domestic and foreign large chipmanufacturers have committed to add the function of peripheral circuits to the chip,which makes the chip become more and more powerful and the size become smaller andsmaller, meanwhile the design complexity is also growing more and more higher.However, it also brings us lots of problems, the higher the concentration of the chip is,the higher the reliability requirements need, and the more complex the test items will be.It has become a serious problem that how to input more and more test vector into testinstruments and execute function test.This paper introduces a method of design a digital integrated circuit testing systemwhich has high precision, fast speed, low power cost and extensible function, andespecially introduces the testing vector’s input method and software design. Functionaltesting is a more important item of digital circuit chips’ test. User must design their owntest vector, format the vector and download it to test chips. After storing the feedback offunctional test, we can judge the performance of the chip through comparing thefeedback to the standard test vector. This software has no limit to store test vector but isrestricted by the hardware’s SRAM which can store2M depth test vector and10M testfrequency. Test vectors generation method mainly includes: direct input method, othersoftware graphic analyzes method, standard text input method, and standard graphicsformat input method. Direct input method means we use the test vector input form ofour software to input test vector according the order of chip’s pins. Other softwarewaveform analysis method means we use other software like QuartusⅡ to generate avector waveform, and we design a program to analyze it to generate test vectors that weneed. Standard text input method means we make a standard text input format to inputtext vectors’ description and using software to analyze it to the test vector we need.Standard format graphics input method is like standard text input, the difference is it usegraphic input form when input test vector. All the approaches have advantages and disadvantages; we can select one method according to the need. The development IDEis Microsoft Visual Studio2008, C#for the language and USB interface for thecommunication. All the test vector, test standard message, test result and set messageare transmitted through USB interface. It uses SQL Server2000to store test message.This system has a good Scalability because of the using of database and SRAM to storetest vector, it can execute different types of functional test according to users’ need.