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On inherent untestability of unaugmented microprogrammed control

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Published:01 August 1989Publication History
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Abstract

Effective and efficient testing of the control part of a processor has remained a difficult problem. While several approaches have been proposed in the literature for handling unaugmented control parts, they involve questionable assumptions, and the results have not been encouraging. Here it is shown that unless some DFT (Design for Testability) approaches are taken, microprogrammed control is inherently a poorly testable structure. The considerations include lack of an elegant fault model, presence of components with low random testability, the length of a checking sequence and information-theoretic considerations. The design approaches must therefore include DFT augmentations and/or removal of sub-functional logic.

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                cover image ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter
                ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter  Volume 20, Issue 3
                Sep. 1989
                253 pages
                ISSN:1050-916X
                DOI:10.1145/75395
                Issue’s Table of Contents
                • cover image ACM Conferences
                  MICRO 22: Proceedings of the 22nd annual workshop on Microprogramming and microarchitecture
                  August 1989
                  253 pages
                  ISBN:0897913248
                  DOI:10.1145/75362

                Copyright © 1989 Author

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                Association for Computing Machinery

                New York, NY, United States

                Publication History

                • Published: 1 August 1989

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