Multiple scan chain design technique for power reduction during test application in BIST

The multiple scan chain has been used in DFT (design for test) architectures primarily to reduce test application time. Since power is an emerging problem, in this paper, we present a design technique for multiple scan chains in BIST (built-in self test) to reduce average power dissipation and test application time, while maintaining the fault coverage. First, we partition the scan chain into a set of smaller chains of similar lengths in such a way that the total number of scan transitions in the scan chain is minimized. Then, we use a novel scan re-ordering algorithm in each smaller chain to further reduce the transitions. Experiments on ISCAS'89 benchmarks show up to 46.2% (average 24.4%) power reduction using the proposed technique, compared to the scan partitions given in the RTL description. Unlike previous approaches, our solution is computationally efficient and test-set independent and thus, can be effectively applied to large BIST circuitry.