电路级划分的三维片上多核系统中测试外壳扫描链的硅通孔数目最小化研究
TSV Minimization for Circuit — Partitioned 3D SoC Test Wrapper Design
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摘要: 随着半导体制造工艺的不断进步而片上互连线延迟并未同步缩小,导致互连线延迟成为未来芯片集成的性能瓶颈.因而,三维集成电路技术被提出来作为延续摩尔定律的一种新方法.它利用硅通孔把不同的电路模块在垂直方向上互连起来,很好的解决了互连线延迟问题.由于三维集成电路自身独有的特性,有许多问题值得研究.本文重点研究电路级划分的三维片上多核系统IP核的测试外壳优化问题.首先, 我们使用2D SoC测试外壳的优化算法优化测试时间.然后,作为垂直互连线的硅通孔被用来连接测试壳扫描链,由于要通过绑定管脚进行绑定对齐,硅通孔要占用很大的面积,因而它也需要作为优化的目标之一.在本文中,我们提出一系列启发式算法,在不延长测试时间的情况下,减少测试外壳所用硅通孔的数目.该方法分为扫描链分配和功能输入/输出端口插入两个步骤,它们各自都可以显著减少硅通孔的数目.大量的实验数据分析表明,通过我们的方法设计的测试壳扫描链可以显著减少硅通孔的数目,即,与随机方法相比,可以减少60.5%,与直观方法相比可以减少26%.Abstract: Semiconductor technology continues advancing, while global on-chip interconnects do not scale with the same pace as transistors, which has become the major bottleneck for performance and integration of future giga-scale ICs. Threedimensional (3D) integration has been proposed to sustain Moore’s law by incorporating through-silicon vias (TSVs) to integrate different circuit modules in the vertical direction, which is believed to be one of the most promising techniques to tackle the interconnect scaling problem. Due to its unique characteristics, there are many research opportunities, and in this paper we focus on the test wrapper optimization for the individual circuit-partitioned embedded cores within 3D System-on- Chips (SoCs). Firstly, we use existing 2D SoCs algorithms to minimize test time for individual embedded cores. In addition, vertical interconnects, i.e., TSVs that are used to construct the test wrapper should be taken into consideration as well. This is because TSVs typically employ bonding pads to tackle the misalignment problem, and they will occupy significant planar chip area, which may result in routing congestion. In this paper, we propose a series of heuristic algorithms to reduce the number of TSVs used in test wrapper chain construction without affecting test time negatively. It is composed of two steps, i.e., scan chain allocation and functional input/output insertion, both of which can reduce TSV count significantly. Through extensive experimental evaluations, it is shown that the test wrapper chain structure designed by our method can reduce the number of test TSVs dramatically, i.e., as much as 60.5% reductions in comparison with the random method and 26% in comparison with the intuitive method.