The cost of testing is no longer negligible. For complex SoCs, the cost of testing can exceed the cost of the silicon itself.
As chip sizes grow, the volume of test data becomes enormous. A 100-million-gate design may require gigabytes of test vectors. Test compression reduces this by: digital systems testing and testable design solution
The reliability of digital systems is paramount in an era where computing permeates safety-critical applications, from autonomous vehicles to medical devices. However, the manufacturing process of integrated circuits (ICs) is imperfect; defects caused by dust particles, material impurities, or photolithography misalignments are inevitable. The cost of testing is no longer negligible
The primary objective of digital systems testing is to distinguish between fault-free and faulty devices before they reach the consumer. Historically, this was achieved via functional testing—applying input stimuli to verify the truth table of the circuit. However, with modern circuits containing billions of transistors, functional testing is computationally intractable for comprehensive defect coverage. Consequently, the industry shifted toward Design for Testability (DFT), a methodology where testability is treated as a primary design constraint rather than a post-design verification step. A 100-million-gate design may require gigabytes of test