CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

5 October 2004

Product News

Mentor Graphics Announces Automated Functionality for Achieving Optimal Test Coverage Results in its FastScan and TestKompress Design-for-Test Tools

Mentor Graphics Corporation announced new automated functionality in its automatic test pattern generation tool (ATPG), FastScanT, and its TestKompress® embedded deterministic test tool. The ATPG Expert feature automatically analyzes the design and manages all the complexities of test pattern generation to achieve optimal results in terms of test coverage, pattern count and run times.

As design processes move to nanometer geometries, selecting the most effective ATPG parameters to achieve desired results can be a daunting task. The ATPG Expert feature works as an internal "expert" within the FastScan or TestKompress tools to automatically analyze the design and make the decisions needed to produce the best results. It manages test generation complexities, such as how to deal with RAM shadow logic, and determines the sequential depth or abort limits to set, the types of compression to exploit, and how to handle clock interactions and bus contention. The result is higher coverage, minimal pattern count and optimized run times.

"The move to nanometer design brings with it a number of new complexities and uncertainties. By automating more of the ATPG process, our goal is to add certainty and to simplify the process of achieving optimal test results," said Robert Hum, vice president and general manager, Design Verification and Test division, Mentor Graphics. "We incorporate the same functionality available in the FastScan tool into the TestKompress tool so customers can easily adopt and integrate these tools into their design flow for comprehensive and scalable test solution."

The FastScan and TestKompress tools can be easily integrated into any standard design flow and they provide the high test coverage while reducing test-pattern-generation time. Both tools offer a wide range of fault models and pattern types for more thorough testing, comprehensive design rules checks, and innovative algorithms for performance-oriented pattern compaction. Based on the ATPG methodology, the TestKompress tool features dramatic compression capabilities designed to reduce test data volume by up to 100X while improving test quality and cost. The ATPG Expert feature is available in the current versions of both tools. For more information visit http://www.mentor.com/dft

 

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