Electronic Design Automation

1.3. Test Automation

Advances in manufacturing process technology have also led to very complex designs. As a result, it has become a requirement that design-for-testability (DFT) features be incorporated in the register-transfer level (RTL) or gate-level design before physical design to ensure the quality of the fabricated devices. In fact, the traditional VLSI development process illustrated in Figure 1.3 involves some form of testing at each stage, including design verification. Once verified, the VLSI design then goes to fabrication and, at the same time, test engineers develop a test procedure based on the design specification and fault models associated with the implementation technology. Because the resulting product quality is in general ...