Power-oriented partial-scan design approach

Power consumption and testability are two of major corisiderations in modern VLSI design. A full-scan method had been used widely in the past, to improve the testability of sequential circuits. Owing to the lower overheads incurred, the partial-scan design has gradually become popular. The authors propose a partialscan selection strategy which is based on the structural analysis approach and considers the area and power overheads simultaneously. A powerful sample-and-search algorithm is used to find the solution that minimises the user-specified cost function in terms of power and area overheads. The experimental results show that the sample-and-search algorithm derived by the authors can effect~vely find the best solution of the specified cost function, for almost all circuits, and, on average, the saving of overheads for each specific cost function is significant.