Customer Reviews

Design-For-Test For Digital IC's and Embedded Core Systems

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While looking for a digital testing textbook that was more accessible to students than the Abramovici "Digital Systems Testing and Testable Design" text, I came across this one and thought it would be the perfect answer. When my copy arrived I was sorely disappointed.

If you need a book to introduce you to what the various testing techniques are, this book does a wonderful job! Its discussion will surely be useful to the typical test engineer. However, if you want to really understand HOW the design techniques work and how to optimize them, this book truly lives up to its claim of "Skip the high-brow theories and mathematical formulas" --- you will receive very little help in your endeavor.

This book's usefulness depends on what your need is. In one case it is great; in another it is poor.

The topics covered in the book were great, but there was not enough detail present. The book is written for readers familiar with design, and sometimes assumes test knowledge as well. The text seemed to be repetative and full page, low detail diagrams were repeated quite frequently. I was disappointed that several pages were not devoted to the different SRAM test algorithms, and the author did not spend much time explaining JTAG design & test.

When I started reading this book I found that what was omitted was theory. In my mind this is exactly what I needed as I was adding BIST into a legacy system. Much of the processes for using DFT are pre-cooked. The ATPT company will provide this. But, this book describes what/where/why. Some how is provided. But, it isn't a dissertation in theory that isn't as useful as principals. This is the book for principals.

If the yellow DFT book is the blue print of circuit testing, then this book is the bolts and nuts. It outlines a good deal of state-of-art DFT problems in the industry, while staying away from rocket science (well, DFT science).

As a DFT engineer, I recommend this book for anyone who wants to know what's going on in the DFT industry.

One thing I found missing in this book is logic BIST. Maybe that means it's still not pratical to use logic BIST? :)