? Credit Points : 10  ? SCQF Level : 11  ? Acronym : EEL-P-PGANA

Today’s integrated circuits, whether digital or analogue, are enormously complex, and if adequate thought is not given to their testing during the design process it will not be possible to test them when they return from fabrication.
A prototype chip will often exhibit faults, or non-idealities, and if consideration has not been given as to how to detect these the chip will be a failure, because it will not be possible to find the reason for the problems encountered, and hence how to fix them.
A production chip will be made in large volumes and cost is critical. Today the cost of the fabrication of the chip can be less than the cost of testing the chip, so it is vital that the cost of testing, and hence the time taken to test the chip, is minimised.
There exist techniques that ease the testing process, or even make chips test themselves. It is also possible to design chips that can reconfigure themselves to work around a fault. All these techniques result in the chip being larger, so the cost of the silicon increases, but the cost of testing falls dramatically. This module will examine these techniques and concepts, and will investigate the tradeoffs to be made.

? Keywords : integrated circuit analogue testing

? Pre-requisites : BEng or MEng Electronics and Electrical Engineering degree, or similar

Home subject area

Electronics, (School of Engineering and Electronics, Schedule M)

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Not being delivered

? Contact Teaching Time : 3 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

All of the following classes

Type Day Start End Area Lecture Monday 09:00 09:50 KB

Students will understand how to best design integrated circuits so that they can be efficiently, quickly and cheaply tested.

100% exam

Exam times

Diet Diet Month Paper Code Paper Name Length 1ST May 1 - 1 hour(s) 30 minutes

The Course Secretary should be the first point of contact for all enquiries.

Course Secretary

Mrs Kim Orsi
Tel : (0131 6)50 5687
Email : Kim.Orsi@ed.ac.uk

Course Organiser

Dr Martin Reekie
Tel : (0131 6)50 5563
Email : H.M.Reekie@ed.ac.uk

School Website : http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/

College Website : http://www.scieng.ed.ac.uk/