Cost based testability analysis

Describes the early stages of the Alvey CAD012 project 'Application Specific Concurrent Testability' (ASCOT), a collaborative venture between the universities of Bath and Hull, Imperial College, London and Silicon Microsystems plc. The main aim of the work at Hull is to develop techniques which would allow circuit testability to be assessed at any point during the design procedure. It rapidly became evident that existing testability measures were very limited in scope and that far more parameters needed to be considered in order to give a realistic picture of testing difficulty. The paper describes the testing problem and then discusses testability parameters of importance before concluding with a brief survey of the current state of the project.