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Integrated Circuit Test Engineering: Modern Techniques

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The complexity of modern electronic circuitry means that design for testability is often a necessity. Yet in many undergraduate electrical engineering courses, circuit testing is offered only as an afterthought. In contrast, Grout explains the different types of testing in a comprehensive manner. The pedagogy is from the ground up. Starting by looking at how chips are made. You need a simple but clear physical picture of the overall processes to comprehend how a circuit on silicon can be tested.

The idea of a Hardware Description Language [HDL] is given. It uses a set of layers of abstraction, not unlike OSI and TCP/IP in fact. At the lowest HDL level is the modelling of a transistor as a switch. While above this is the logic gate; a refinement that deliberately discards as much of the device physics as safely possible. Above that in turn is the register transfer level, etc.

A very important idea that you should pay careful attention to is the Built In Self Test [BIST]. Having an intrinsic hardware self test can be the simplest way to verify crucial circuitry. Perhaps BIST is not appropriate for all circuits, but for some circuits in some applications [like satellites], it might excel or indeed be the only viable approach.

The text covers both analog and digital testing methods. With an emphasis on digital because most electronics today is the latter.

The book also gives a precis of Verilog and VHDL, the 2 main HDLs out there. If you need a more comprehensive description of either, other texts will be necessary.