The testing and verification of semiconductor chips was a prominent topic at this year’s European Test Systems (ETS) conference, especially in the area of Design-for-Test (DFT) tools and techniques.

Design for testability (DFT) works to make a circuit more testable to ensure that it was manufactured correctly. Alfred Crouch explains the purpose of DFT in his book, Design-For-Test for Digital ICs ...

This is accomplished by connecting all of the design's registers in serial fashion, allowing test engineers to shift data in and out through a few ports at the chip level (Fig. 1). That allows, for ...