September 19, 2011 -- Mentor Graphics Corp. today announced a comprehensive solution, jointly developed by Mentor and ARM, for manufacturing test of ARM processor-based designs. The reference flow provides documentation, seamless interfaces, and scripts that accelerate the development of a complete test solution for ARM IP based on the Tessent test tools from the Mentor Graphics. The flow is optimized for high test quality, lower test cost and shortened design-for-test development schedules.

Today's SOCs typically contain hundreds of memory subsystems consisting of several types of individual SRAMs, including single- and dual-port SRAM, register files and ROMs. Within each subsystem, the memories may range from high-speed SRAMs operating at higher voltages to power-optimized SRAMs operating at reduced voltage. All such memories have different test and/or repair requirements, depending on the size of the individual memory instances, total SOC memory size, process defect level and maturity. The Tessent solution provides a completely automated memory-test and -repair solution including at speed testing with 100% accurate logical-to-physical mapping of ARM Artisan memories.

In addition to the many memory SOC subsystems, some of the memories are further embedded within processor cores which have been custom tailored to achieve the highest performance and lowest power in the smallest footprint. The additional complexity added by the need for proper test — and in some cases, repair of the memories contained in these optimized cores — mandates a test and repair solution that achieves the highest yield with minimal impact on SOC performance, power, footprint or cost. ARM and Mentor have collaborated to enable Tessent support for the ARM MBIST core interface, which provides one or more interfaces for each embedded core, enabling full testing of every memory within each core with minimum impact on core power, performance or area.

"The new Tessent TestKompress reference flow provides a simple and verified test methodology for cost-effective, high-quality test of processor cores and associated logic," said Teresa McLaurin, DFT manager at ARM. "This builds on our previous collaboration on comprehensive, automated built-in self test (BIST) solutions for ARM physical memory IP using the Tessent MemoryBIST product."