| dc.description |
Testing of devices is an important factor in the semiconductor industry . There is a constant effort by major semiconductor companies to bring down test cost and time , without compromising on the test quality . Implementation of built in self test techniques (BIST ) are required , especially for complex components like microprocessors .
Several challenges are associated with development of BIST techniques and development of such techniques on the ATE is time consuming . This thesis project is an attempt to address the challenges associated with development of a certain BIST , called cache resident self testing (CReST ) , developed at AMD [5] . In CReST , test vectors are loaded into the cache of the microprocessor , and the processor is used to test itself .
In this work , high speed IO links in the processor are tested . The device under test is an AMD processor with a G34 package , having four HyperTransport links .
The work includes debugging an engineering device interface board (DIB ) , developed to implement the loopback test , avoiding certain tester channels . This passive loopback DIB gives better performance and is expected to be used in production testing soon . A comparison of the loopback and the production DIB is presented . Also the aspects of loopback testing and principles of CReST are discussed , along with an overview of the ATE used for this process |
|