Launch-on-Shift-Capture Transition Tests

Intaik Park and Edward J. McCluskey

Center for Reliable Computing, Stanford University, Stanford, USA

places timing requirements on the routing of scan-enable

Abstract signal.
The two most popular transition tests are launch-on-shift
(LOS) test and launch-on-capture (LOC) test. The LOS
and LOC tests differ in their launch mechanisms, creating
their own pros and cons. In this paper, new hybrids of
LOS and LOC tests that launch transitions using both
launch mechanisms are introduced. The new transition
tests improved fault coverage without significant test
length penalty. This paper presents the concepts and
pattern generation methods of these new transition tests
as well as experimental results that demonstrate the
benefits of these tests. Figure 1. The concept and waveforms of LOS

1. Introduction
The transition test [Waicukauski 87] is one of the most
widely used techniques to ensure the correct temporal
behavior of the manufactured integrated circuits (ICs). It
consists of a pair of vectors (V1,V2). The first vector, V1,
initializes a logic value at a fault site (a node in a network).
Then, the second vector, V2, launches a transition of logic Figure 2. The concept and waveforms of LOC
values (0Æ1 or 1Æ0) at the fault site and propagates the
Several methods exist to mitigate the timing requirements
transition to an observable point (a scan flip-flop or a
on the scan-enable signal of LOS testing. Level Sensitive
primary output).
Scan Design (LSSD) requires two fast clock signals that
Transition tests are categorized by how they launch could be used to launch and capture transitions
transitions: launch-on-shift (LOS), launch-on-capture [Eichelberger 77]. Another method involves locally
(LOC), and enhanced-scan transition tests. LOS and LOC generating fast scan-enable signals for LOS testing
tests do not require any additional hardware while the [Ahmed 06, Wang 04]. For the rest of the paper, we
enhanced-scan transition test requires special types of assume that the designs considered in this work have
scan flip-flops to apply the test vectors [Dasgupta 81]. capabilities to apply LOS test.
The enhanced-scan transition is not considered in this
The launch-on-capture (LOC) transition test launches a
paper; the focus is only on the first two types of transition
transition through a logic network which is controlled by
tests.
system clock pulses [Eichelberger 91, Savir 94]. In LOC
The launch-on-shift (LOS) test launches a transition of a testing, both launch and capture vectors are initiated by
logic value by the last clock pulse of the scan shift system clock pulses. The concept and waveforms of the
operation [Eichelberger 91, Savir 92], followed by a LOC test are described in Fig. 2.
system clock pulse that captures the transition. Figure 1
In Fig.s 1 and 2, it should be noticed that the second clock
illustrates the concept of LOS testing along with the
pulse (cp2) of LOS and both clock pulses (cp1 and cp2) of
waveforms of clock signal (clk) and scan-enable signal
LOC are system clock pulses. In addition, the LOC test
(SE).
procedure also requires the scan shift operations and
The time period between the launch clock pulse (cp1) and inherently contains the last scan shift clock pulse.
the capture clock pulses (cp2) determines the test However, unlike LOS test, the last shift of LOC need not
application frequency. Note that the scan-enable signal be applied at fast speed.
must fully transition during this time period, and this

Paper 35.3 INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE 1

1-4244-4203-0/08/$20.00 ©2008 IEEE
Therefore, if an additional system clock pulse is appended
to the LOS test and the last shift clock of the LOC test is
applied at fast speed, the test applications of both tests are
identical. This introduces the mix of these two test
methods, or hybrids of LOS and LOC: launch-on-shift-
capture (LOSC) test and launch-on-capture-shift (LOCS)
test.
The launch-on-shift-capture (launch-on-capture-shift) test
is a three-pattern test for transition faults that launches
transitions by both launch-on-shift and launch-on-capture
mechanisms. The concepts of LOSC and LOCS tests and
their signal waveforms are illustrated in Fig. 3. LOSC
(LOCS) tests consist of three vectors (V1,V2,V3). The first
vector (V1) initializes a logic value at a fault site as in
LOS. Then the second vector (V2) launches a transition
and propagates it. At the same time, V2 also initializes a
logic value at a different fault site in a way the first vector
of LOC does. Finally, the third vector (V3) performs two
things; 1) it propagates the fault effect launched by vector
pair (V1,V2), and 2) it launches a transition initialized by
V2 and propagates it.
Figure 3. The concept and waveforms of LOCS and LOSC
LOSC and LOCS are identical in terms of test application
(last shift clock pulse followed by two system clock
pulses), but differ in how they are generated. LOSC test
is made by generating LOS test first with don’t-care bits
unspecified. These don’t-care bits are filled with LOC
test. LOCS test is generated in the same way, but the
LOC test is generated first before LOS test is used to fill
the don’t-care bits.
The don’t-care bits are exploited in the context of test set
compaction [Goel 79], test data compression [Hiraide 03],
or power reduction during scan shift operations [Cho 07].
LOSC and LOCS share the same concept with the
compaction scheme; they utilize don’t-care bits to detect
additional faults. However, LOSC and LOCS differ from
existing compaction methods. LOSC (LOCS) targets
additional faults either by LOC or LOS, whichever is
easier, while compaction uses only one method to test
additional faults. Therefore, in LOSC and LOCS, LOS-
untestable faults can be tested by LOC and LOC-
untestable faults by LOS. On the other hand, conventional
compaction techniques leave untestable faults undetected.
The rest of the paper is organized as the following.
Section 2 discusses the limitations of conventional
Paper 35.3 INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE
transition tests and previous works on the hybrids of LOS
and LOC. Section 3 describes the test generation methods.
Section 4 presents the experimental setup and results on
benchmark circuits. Section 5 discusses the benefits and
limitations. Finally, Sec. 6 concludes the paper.
2. Previous works
In this section, possible problems related to the two
transition test approaches as well as previous researches to
alleviate these problems are introduced.
2.1. Untestable faults
LOC test usually achieve lower fault coverages than LOS
test. In many cases, it is due to functionally
unsensitizable faults that are not tested by LOC [Savir 94,
Rearick 01]. Many of these faults can be tested under
LOS since it does not launch transitions through a
functional logic network. The detection of these faults by
LOS methods is suspected to cause over-testing (rejecting
good devices by falsely testing under environments that
would not happen in functional mode). Nevertheless, it is
also shown that some of these faults are testable by LOC
when more than two clock pulses are used for fault
activation and propagation [Abraham 06, Zhang 06].
On the other hand, LOS test does not always achieve
100% fault coverage. There are also untestable faults in
LOS testing as described in [Zhang 07]. Some of these
faults are untestable due to shift-dependency, but may
actually fail the system operation if present. To reduce
the number of LOS untestable faults, scan chain
reordering or test-point insertion techniques were
developed [Li 05, Gupta 03, Wang 03]. It is also
noticeable that some of these faults may be detected under
LOC test approach [Zhang 06].
2.2. Hybrids of LOS and LOC
As discussed above, LOS-untestable faults may be tested
by LOC while LOC-untestable faults may be tested by
LOS. Naturally, there have been efforts to combine the
advantages of both testing methods [Ahmed 06, Wang 04,
Devtaprasanna 05].
In [Ahmed 06, Wang 04], circuits are partitioned into two
regions. One region is controlled by slow scan-enable
signals to be tested by LOC test. The other region is
controlled by locally generated fast scan-enable signals
and tested by LOS test.
These methods partition circuits into many regions by a
controllability measure or a developed cost function. The
quality of the partitioning determines the effectiveness of
the methods. Also, under these methods, portions of
circuits are tested solely by LOS while other parts are
tested by LOC only. Therefore, LOS-untestable faults in
LOS-tested regions and LOC-untestable faults in LOC-
2
tested regions are still uncovered. On the other hand, primary ATPG produces test that launches transition by
LOSC and LOCS do not depend on partitioning of LOS (LOC) method.
circuits and they can detect faults by either LOC or LOS,
whichever is easier. Test generation flow (pseudo-code)
While ( undetected fault exists )
Another approach was to implement multiple scan-enable {
signals [Devtaprasanna 05]. These scan-enable signals do Primary LOS (LOC) ATPG
not require fast switching capability, but are controlled Extract care bits of LOS (LOC) pattern
separately. Hence, while some scan-enable signals are Secondary LOC (LOS) ATPG
de-asserted to perform LOC test, other scan-enable (with care bits from LOS (LOC) pattern)
signals are kept high, keeping flip-flops in the shift mode. Fault simulate in LOS (LOC) method
Therefore, some flip-flops perform launch and capture (with don’t-care bits filled by LOC (LOS))
while other flip-flops only launch transitions by shift }
operations.
Figure 4. LOSC and LOCS test generation flow
In this method, a fault can be tested either by LOS or
LOC. However, when some faults are tested by one test The secondary ATPG is another ATPG process that
method, other faults in the same scan-enable region have exploits the unspecified bits of the test patterns from the
to be tested by the same method in one test pattern. On primary ATPG to test additional faults. It can be regarded
the other hand, LOSC and LOCS can test faults in as a way to fill don’t-care bits of existing test pattern. To
different methods simultaneously, which may increase the keep the original care bits from the primary ATPG result
efficiency of a test pattern. during the secondary ATPG process, these care bits are
extracted and used as constraints during the secondary
3. Test pattern Generation ATPG. If there are don’t-care bits left after the secondary
To generate LOSC and LOCS tests, Automatic Test ATPG process, they are filled pseudo-randomly. In
Pattern Generator (ATPG) tools for LOS and LOC test LOSC (LOCS) test, the secondary ATPG uses LOC
are required. LOC ATPG can be used directly without (LOS) method.
any modifications, but LOS ATPG requires a slight The resulting test pattern is fault simulated again in LOS
modification. (LOC) method. This is necessary to identify additional
Unlike the conventional LOS test where fault effects are LOS (LOC) detection by the care bits from the secondary
propagated only one time frame, the LOS test for LOSC ATPG.
and LOCS propagates fault effects over two time frames. The iterative network for LOS ATPG would contain twice
However, in this paper, to generate LOS test with two as many faults as in the original network. To prevent
system clocks without modifications to the existing ATPG, falsely testing faults in the second time frame, only faults
the netlists of the circuits were ‘unrolled’ to emulate that belong to the first time frame are considered in LOS
iterative networks of the circuits. The iterative network is ATPG.
a form that emulates multiple time frames of the circuit
operation [McCluskey 58]. Using the unrolled netlists, Table 1. Benchmark circuits
conventional LOS ATPG could be used directly to circuit Gate count FF count No. of Faults
generate LOSC and LOCS. s13207 7,951 625 11,940
The test generation flow is shown in Fig. 4 as a pseudo- s15850 9,772 513 14,738
code. Note that the LOC test generation and fault s38417 22,179 1,564 43,032
simulation in the procedure use regular netlists while the s38584 19,253 1,275 47,074
LOS test generation and fault simulation use unrolled
b17 12,949 1,314 95,328
netlists.
b18 35,884 3,014 263,746
The generation of LOSC and LOCS consists of two b19 69,437 6,030 511,140
ATPG processes: the primary ATPG and the secondary
b20 7,390 430 55,542
ATPG. The primary ATPG is an ATPG process that
generates test patterns without any restrictions. The b21 7,583 430 56,418
patterns generated by the primary ATPG contain don’t- b22 11,135 613 83,664
care bits that are not specified. For LOSC (LOCS), the

Paper 35.3 INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE 3

 Table 2. Test pattern counts and fault coverages of test sets
LOS LOSC LOC LOCS
circuit
length cov Length cov length cov length cov
s13207 179 99.62% 140 99.66% 114 82.85% 98 93.22%
s13580 148 99.73% 137 99.87% 148 71.10% 131 81.12%
s38417 257 98.12% 191 99.76% 293 95.32% 278 95.66%
s38584 171 99.80% 208 99.87% 504 80.97% 384 87.08%
b17 1,305 81.27% 1,264 87.52% 1,584 69.52% 1,579 68.96%
b18 4,521 84.91% 4,404 89.29% 5,002 67.13% 4,910 67.71%
b19 9,602 84.33% 6,400 88.35% 8,365 67.03% 8,223 67.37%
b20 1,240 96.12% 1,446 96.80% 1,484 88.25% 1,490 88.61%
b21 1,199 96.17% 1,475 96.63% 1,464 87.40% 1,329 87.15%
b22 1,413 96.47% 1,692 96.77% 1,583 84.48% 1,604 84.89%

4. Experimental Results
We evaluated the test length and fault coverage of LOSC
and LOSC tests on some of ISCAS89 and ITC99
benchmark circuits shown in Table 1.
To attain the most efficient LOSC or LOCS test sets,
single test pattern should be generated by the primary
ATPG and filled by the secondary ATPG before the next
pattern is considered. In this way, the primary ATPG for
the next pattern would not target faults that could be
detected by the secondary ATPG for the previous pattern.
However, the commercial ATPG tool is highly optimized
for compaction. Due to the optimization, when the ATPG
tool generates one test pattern at a time and repeats until
all the faults are tested or tried, the resulting test length
was abnormally longer than a test generated at once by the
same ATPG tool. It is unfair to compare our approach
with the LOS and LOC generated at once due to the
optimization performed on the latter. Thus, we settled
with something in between the two extreme cases.
For the purpose of fair comparison, all the test sets in this
paper were generated in a group of 32 patterns, so that
both the proposed approach (LOSC and LOCS) and the
base case (LOS and LOC) do not benefit from the
optimization of the ATPG tool.
In addition, all the test patterns were generated with the
default backtracking limit (abort limit of 10) and the
default compaction option (high compaction).
4.1. LOSC and LOCS test sets
LOSC and LOCS test sets were generated as described
above. They are compared with LOS and LOC test sets in
terms of test length and fault coverage in Table 2. In this
table, columns under label ‘length’ represent test length
and columns labeled as ‘cov’ represent the fault coverages
of the test sets. In each row, the shortest test length and
the highest fault coverage are bold-faced.
Table 2 shows that LOSC tests achieved the highest fault
coverage. However, the test length of LOSC was
comparable to LOS test or shorter than LOS test in some
cases.
LOCS performs better than LOC, but worse than LOS and
LOSC. That is because the LOCS test generation
terminates when the primary LOC ATPG cannot produce
any more tests for undetected faults, without invoking the
secondary LOS ATPG even though some of these faults
could be tested by LOS.
The CPU time required to generate these test sets were not
considered in this experiment. The commercial ATPG
tool is optimized to generate pure LOS or LOC tests, but
the generation of LOSC and LOCS tests requires
invocations of both LOS and LOC ATPGs. In addition,
the implementation of LOSC and LOCS is not integrated
into the ATPG tool, but it is rather an augmented form.
Therefore, in this work, the qualities of the test sets are
compared without considering the test generation time.
4.2. Fault Coverage
LOSC and LOCS tests achieve higher fault coverage
compared to LOS and LOC respectively. These
improvements in fault coverage are due to the
undetectable faults under one method (LOC or LOS)
being detected by the other method. Table 3 summarizes
undetected faults in each method. Column 2 shows the
total number of faults in each circuit. Column 3 and 4
represent undetected faults by LOS and LOC test
respectively. Column 5 shows the number of undetected
faults after applying both LOS and LOC. Finally, column
6 and 7 represents undetected faults of LOSC and LOCS
test respectively. In each row, the entries with the fewest
undetected faults are bold-faced.

Paper 35.3 INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE 4

 Table 3. Undetected faults of each test method
circuit total faults LOS LOC LOS+LOC LOSC LOCS
s13207 11,940 45 2,047 38 40 810
s15850 14,738 38 4,255 21 20 2,782
s38417 43,032 900 1,926 122 102 1,824
s38584 47,074 94 8,929 63 63 6,082
b17 95,328 17,437 28,726 11,641 11,871 29,592
b18 263,746 40,231 85,672 26,029 28,766 85,158
b19 511,140 81,175 169,142 53,981 54,439 166,789
b20 555,42 2,176 6,484 1,752 1,783 6,328
b21 56,418 2,167 7,067 1,802 1,871 7,249
b22 83,664 2,874 12,872 2,614 2,709 12,642

In most cases, the combination of LOS and LOC had the test set and LOC detection is insignificant in the
fewest undetected faults, or the most detected faults. beginning of the test set. However, at certain points (at
Table 3 shows that some of LOS undetected faults were pattern number 992 in Fig. 5 and at pattern number 1,312
detected by LOC test and the some of LOC undetected in Fig. 6), the number of LOC detected faults increases
faults by LOS test. Hence, when both LOS and LOC tests while additional LOS detection is minimal.
were applied, the number of undetected faults was the
least. However, it should be noticed that LOSC detected % don't-care bits
100.00%

the comparable number of faults to the combination of 95.00%

LOS and LOC. 90.00%

To show the portion of LOS detected faults and LOC 85.00%

detected faults in LOSC test, the numbers of faults in each 80.00%

category of b17 and b18 circuits are plotted in Fig. 5 and 75.00%

Fig. 6 respectively.
8

2
88

84

64
32
12

22

32

41

51

60

70

80

89

99
10

11

12
80,000 Pattern Number

70,000
Figure 7. Don’t-care bit percentages of test patterns (b17)
Detected Faults

60,000

50,000 100.00%
% don't-care bits

40,000
95.00%
30,000 loc detect
90.00%
los detect
20,000
32 192 352 512 672 832 992 1152 1312 1472 85.00%

Pattern Number 80.00%

Figure 5. LOSC test - detected faults by LOS and LOC (b17)
32
288
544
800
1056
1312
1568
1824
2080
2336
2592
2848
3104
3360
3616
3872
4128
4384

225000
Pattern Number
205000
185000
Figure 8. Don’t-care bit percentages of test patterns (b18)
Detected Faults

165000
145000 It is well known that, in the last phase of test pattern
125000 generation, a significant number of patterns is required to
105000
gain the last small portion of fault coverage [McCluskey
85000 LOC detect
65000 89]. The patterns generated at the end are less efficient, or
LOS detect
45000 contain many don’t-care bits, which give the secondary
32 320 608 896 1184 1472 1760 2048 2336 2624 2912 3200 3488 3776 4064 4352
ATPG more freedom to produce tests for additional faults.
Pattern Number

Figure 6. LOSC test - detected faults by LOS and LOC (b18) The percentages of don’t-care bits in scan loads of the
primary ATPG (LOS) generated test patterns in LOSC are
In Fig.s 5 and 6, it is shown that the LOS detected faults plotted in Fig.s 7 and 8. In these figures, each column
are the majority of detected faults throughout the entire shows the average percentage of don’t-care bits of 32 test

Paper 35.3 INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE 5

patterns, which would be fed to the secondary ATPG to
generate additional LOC tests.
The test patterns contain many don’t-care bits (over 95%
of a scan load) starting from pattern number 992 in Fig. 7
and pattern number 1,312 in Fig. 8. Notice the points
where the percentages of don’t-care bits increase and
where the LOC detection increases (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6) are
aligned.
count can be decreased if they are targeted by LOC ATPG
instead of LOS ATPG.
Even though LOSC test achieved higher fault coverage
compared to LOS test, the longer test length is not
desirable. To fairly compare the test length and fault
coverage of LOSC and LOS, the fault coverage of both
tests were plotted in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10.
90%

4.3. Test Set Length 80%

Fault Coverage
LOCS test were shorter and achieved higher fault 70%
coverage than LOC test. However, the fault coverage of 60%
LOCS test was still lower than LOS or LOSC test. On the 50%
other hand, LOSC test improved fault coverage of LOS LOSC
40%
test, but it sometimes resulted in longer test length. LOS
30%
The increased test length of LOSC over LOS is suspected 32 352 672 992 1312
to be caused by the two-time-frame propagation Pattern Number
requirements of LOS test used in LOSC. To verify this
assumption, LOS test sets generated for original circuits Figure 9. Fault coverage comparison of LOS and LOSC (b17)
and the unrolled circuits (faults propagated over two time
frames) are compared in Table 4. 100%
90%
Table 4. Comparison on LOS of original and unrolled circuit
Fault Coverage

80%
LOS LOS Unroll LOSC 70%
circuit
length fc (%) Length fc (%) Pat fc (%) 60%
50%
s13207 172 99.63 217 99.61 140 99.66 40% LOSC
s13580 152 99.74 184 99.69 137 99.87 30%
LOS
s38417 257 98.08 293 98.24 191 99.76 20%
32 672 1312 1952 2592 3232 3872 4512
s38584 173 99.80 206 99.80 208 99.87
Pattern Number
B17 1,305 81.27 1,654 81.17 1,264 87.52
B18 4,521 84.91 5,773 83.38 4,404 89.29 Figure 10. Fault coverage comparison of LOS and LOSC (b18)
B19 9,602 84.33 11,823 82.76 6,400 88.35
In these figures, the fault coverage of LOS is higher than
B20 1,240 96.12 1,258 95.13 1,446 96.80 LOSC at the first portion of the test set. But, in the later
B21 1,199 96.17 1,218 95.42 1,434 96.69 part of the test set, LOSC achieves higher fault coverage
B22 1,413 96.47 1,617 95.64 1,692 96.77 than LOS. The cross-over points are at pattern number
992 in Fig. 9 and pattern number 1,056 in Fig. 10. These
In Table 4, columns under ‘length’ represent the test points are the same or very close to where the number of
lengths and columns under ‘fc’ show the fault coverages. don’t-care bits (Fig.s 7 and 8) and the LOC fault
The test lengths for the unrolled circuits were always detections are increased (Fig.s 5 and 6).
longer than the tests for the original circuits. However, If the highest possible fault coverage is desired, LOSC
LOSC tests were usually shorter than LOS for unrolled test is better than LOS test. If the test length is the
circuits and sometimes even shorter than LOS for original concern and the test has to be truncated, LOSC has higher
circuits. This is when the additional fault detection by fault coverage as long as the test set is truncated after the
LOC in LOSC test compensated the test length penalties cross-over point (pattern number 992 of b17 LOSC test
from the two-time-frame propagations of unrolled LOS. and pattern number 1,056 of b18 LOSC test).
The test length reduction of LOSC over unrolled LOS can
also be coming from the mixed use of LOS and LOC. As 4.4. Launch-on-shift with Launch-on-capture top-off
discussed above, a significant number of patterns are used We think that LOSC and LOCS tests achieved higher fault
to test hard-to-detect faults at the end of test generations. coverages because they use both LOS and LOC methods.
However, hard-to-detect faults in LOS are not necessarily Hence, it would be natural to compare LOSC tests with
hard-to-detect in LOC. When this is the case, the pattern combinations of LOS and LOC tests.

Paper 35.3 INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE 6

LOS test achieved higher fault coverage and shorter test
length than LOC test. However, like all the transition test
generations, LOS test generation becomes inefficient
when only hard-to-detect faults are left and many patterns
are required to detect these faults to improve the last
portion of the fault coverage. Therefore, it may be
beneficial to switch to LOC test at certain point and
generate top-off LOC patterns, which test hard-to-detect
faults of LOS testing using LOC test.
To compare this idea with LOSC test sets, LOS tests were
topped-off with LOC tests at four different points. Each
group of 32 patterns were fault simulated during the LOS
test generation and when the increase of the fault coverage
by the last 32 pattern was 1) less than 1%, 2) less than
0.5%, 3) less than 0.2%, and 4) less than 0.1%, the LOS
test generation stopped and LOC test generation started on
the remaining undetected faults. The resulting test sets
are shown in Table 5.
In Table 5, the test with the highest fault coverage is bold-
faced. LOSC test always achieved the highest fault
coverage. LOS tests topped-off with LOC tests achieved
comparable fault coverages to LOSC test sets, but with
more test patterns.
4.5. Experimental Result Summary
LOSC and LOCS showed higher fault coverage than LOS
and LOC tests respectively. LOSC test sets were
sometimes longer and sometimes shorter than LOS tests
while LOCS achieved more compact test than LOC test in
most cases.
Given the higher fault coverages of LOSC test set, aspects
that affect the LOSC test length were investigated. First,
when LOS fault coverage is relatively low (or more room
to improve fault coverage), LOSC test set achieved better
compaction with significant fault coverage improvement.
Secondly, the more don’t-care bits in a test pattern, the
better the secondary LOC ATPG performed, detecting
more faults by the LOC method.
5. Discussions
The benefits of LOSC and LOCS tests are as the
followings. First, they target untestable faults under one
method (LOS or LOC) using the other method, improving
fault coverage. Secondly, hard-to-detect faults in one
method may be east-to-detect in the other method. Hence,
testing each fault using the easier way can improve the
efficiencies of test patterns, which may decrease test
length. Lastly, they can be implemented on top of
existing ATPG with compaction, leading to more efficient
use of don’t-care bits.
LOSC and LOCS tests also have limitations. First, they
require fast switching scan-enable signals. However, even
without the fast SE signal, a LOCS test set has an
advantage over a conventional LOC test. The LOS fault
activation mechanism initiates transitions of logic values
at fault sites and propagates the fault effects. This is
analogous to a test for stuck-open faults when they are not
applied at-speed. Hence, LOCS would have higher stuck-
open fault coverage than LOC.
Secondly, the LOS test in LOSC (LOCS) needs to
propagate fault effects over two time frames rather than
one time frame of the conventional LOS test, which
penalizes the test length. However, when combined with
LOC, LOSC and LOCS performed the same or the better
in terms of fault coverage and/or test length compared to
pure LOS, which justifies the use of two time frames.
In this paper, possible improvements of LOS and LOC
transition tests in terms of test length and fault coverage
were investigated. However, the quality of the test set is
not only measured by these two metrics. Other ways to

Table 5. LOS test topped-off with LOC test

LOS+LOC LOS+LOC LOS+LOC LOS+LOC
LOS (orig) LOSC
(<1%) (<0.5%) (<0.2%) (<0.1%)
circuit length fc (%) length fc (%) length fc (%) length fc (%) length fc (%) length fc (%)

s13207 172 99.63 144 99.47 144 99.47 144 99.47 NA NA 140 99.66
s13580 152 99.74 107 97.21 145 99.46 145 99.46 145 99.46 137 99.87
s38417 257 98.08 189 99.08 231 99.49 231 99.49 NA NA 191 99.76
s38584 173 99.80 177 98.31 238 99.63 238 99.63 238 99.63 208 99.87
b17 1,305 81.27 1,090 83.99 1,330 85.83 1,563 86.90 1,680 87.11 1,264 87.52
b18 4,521 84.91 3,142 84.42 3,518 87.21 3,823 88.20 3,990 88.47 4,404 89.29
b19 9,602 84.33 5,396 81.26 5813 84.53 6,257 86.22 6,382 86.53 6,400 88.35
b20 1,240 96.12 1,103 95.11 1,154 95.30 1,464 96.11 1,830 96.62 1,446 96.80
b21 1,199 96.17 1,065 93.99 1,293 95.15 1,671 96.30 1,795 96.54 1,434 96.69
b22 1,413 96.47 1,070 93.18 1,253 94.43 1,572 95.60 1,867 96.57 1,692 96.77

Paper 35.3 INTERNATIONAL TEST CONFERENCE 7

improve the transition test quality include applying the
concept of TARO (Transition fault propagated to All
Reachable Outputs) [Tseng 01, Park 05], N-detect [Ma
95] or employing multiple clock cycles [Zhang 06].
The idea of mixing two different tests in one test pattern
should not be limited to the hybrids of LOC and LOS.
Previous researchers have shown the importance of using
multiple test metrics to test manufactured ICs [Maxwell
93, Nigh 97, Ferhani 06]. The hybrid concept of LOSC
can be extended to the mix of different test metrics for this
purpose. As long as don’t-care bits are available in test
patterns, they can be exploited to generate additional tests
for different metrics. For example, LOC and single stuck-
at fault test or single stuck-at test and bridge fault test can
be combined.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, Launch-on-Shift-Capture and Launch-on-
Capture-Shift tests are introduced. These tests exploits
don’t-care bits of existing LOS (LOC) test set to detect
additional faults by LOC (LOS) launch mechanism, which
may be more efficient for some faults. Experimental
results showed that LOSC test achieved higher fault
coverage than any other test or mix of test sets.
7. Acknowledgments
We thank Rohit Kapur of Synopsys, Brion Keller of
Cadence and Samy Makar of C-Switch for their helpful
discussions and support. We thank all the members of
CRC for their help.
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