Bottom-up flow

EZ-BIST tool usage, BFL flow, BII flow, memory grouping
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iSTART
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Joined: 08 Dec 2020, 15:53

Bottom-up flow

Post by iSTART »

To construct a large integrated circuit, designers can adopt bottom-up flow, one by one blocks, to accomplish MBIST design. EZ-BIST tool provides an easy way to assist user adding MBIST into such large integrated circuit architecture.

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    Figure 1: An Example for bottom-up architecture

In Figure 1, there are 3 modules, design1, design2 and design 4 need to be hardened. In this case, it has to execute twice bottom-up flows. In addition, the BIST circuit in design 3 module need to be inserted while executing design 1 BFL flow.

To utilize EZ-BIST executing bottom-up flow, user should push the inserted BIST circuit to top module. For example, in Figure 1, user should insert BIST circuit into design 2 and design 4.

Then, user insert BIST circuit into the design 1 module. Meanwhile, BIST also needs to be inserted into designe 3. And then insert the BIST circuit into the top level of chip_top. Finally, integrate all BIST circuits and use a standard JTAG interface as the unique control interface.

Since design 2 and design 4 modules are in the lowest level, the settings of these 2 modules should define following 2 assignments.
  
  • set bist_interface = ieee1500
      
  • set integrator_mode = no


Integrator_mode assign to “no”, EZ-BSIT will generate *.blockinfo text file.

In the design 1 module, one more option “block_path” should be added. The settings as below:
  
  • set bist_interface = ieee1500
      
  • set integrator_mode = no
      
  • set block_path = ./mbist_design2/EZBIST_design2.blockinfo | ./mbist_design4/EZBIST_ design4.blockinfo


After design 1 module settings done, user could insert design 2 and design 4 with BIST into design1.f. Please refer to Figure 2.


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    Figure 2: An Example to insert design 2 & 4 into design 1

To insert BIST into TOP module, it is similar to design 1, except integrator_mode should assign to yes. The assignments of other options are the same as the previous steps. Please notice the following assignments:
  
  • set bist_interface = ieee1500
      
  • set integrator_mode = yes
      
  • set block_path = ./mbist_design1/EZBIST_design1.blockinfo

The file-list of design 1 with BIST put into chip_top.f as figure 3:


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    Figure 3: Insert design 1 module to chip top

User can integrate all BIST circuits through EZ-BIST integration flow. And it should be assigned
*.postfixinfo file as below. EZ-BIST will insert BIST circuit into chip_top and then generate
*.postfixinfo file.
  • set postfixinfo = ./mbist_chip_top/EZBIST_chip_top.postfixinfo

Figure 6-7 shows the architecture after executing these integration flow in this chapter.

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    Figure 6-7 Bottom-up flow complete architecture
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