Mentor Graphics has just posted a very interesting white paper on their website that discusses the advantages of combining ATPG and logic BIST to produce improved test coverage: Improve Logic Test with a Hybrid ATPG/BIST Solution, by Ron Press and Vidya Neerkundar.
The paper’s a good read for several reasons. There’s a brief, but accessible explanation of both ATPG and logic BIST, and then an equally accessible explanation of the benefits of combining the two to create a hybrid test approach.
This week, I spoke with Mentor’s Steve Pateras and Gene Forte about the paper and asked why, at this late date in the development of ATPG [automatic test pattern generation] and BIST [built-in self test], the paper starts with basic explanations of these two seemingly well-established test strategies.
