DFT in VLSI- All You Need To Know

VLSI is the most coveted industry with numerous job opportunities for today’s generation. Every company is looking for VLSI engineers to excel in the market. DFT in VLSI stands for Design For Testability.

But with all the technological advancement, the chances of faults and drawbacks have also increased. Therefore design for testability (DFT) enters the arena!

Also read: job opportunities in VLSI and embedded system

What is DFT or Design For Testability in VLSI?

DFT in VLSI is an innovative design technique to make testing a chip cost-effective by adding circuitry to the chip. They improve the observability and controllability of internal nodes to increase the testability of all logic in the chip

Why do we need DFT in VLSI?

There are several problems associated with the manufacturing of chips. A few of them are:

The VLSI chips are becoming smaller and thinner with numerous transistors in them. Therefore, with the increased density, the chances to face a dead duck is also high
There can be errors in the translation process due to bugs in CAD software tools.
To check whether the chip is designed according to the blueprint designed or not.
Faulty chips can cause a substantial loss to the company with huge penalties.

Also read: Career growth for a DFT engineer

Therefore, DFT in VLSI helps to have thorough testing of chips and avoid the chances of any fault.

What does DFT do?

Design for testability (DFT) covers the following areas in the life cycle of a chip:

Design: Test structures are inserted during the design stage to measure the testability of each component.
Test generation: applying DFT at this stage helps speed up the ATPG process.
First silicon: here the defects are detected and handled with appropriate diagnostics. All the process problems, model errors and pattern errors are rectified by DFT.
Chip production: DFT at this stage helps to test the overall shipped-product quality. To ensure the smooth working of the product, chips are thoroughly checked and tested.
Board-level test: DFT at this stage helps to test the operational life of chips with a temperature test.
System-level test: to ensure that the replaceable parts are working smoothly, the application of DFT is important here.

Helping with all these stages can yield better quality of results, faster development cycle, the better quality of product and easier diagnostics.

Conclusion

There is diverse DFT course online available to excel in the VLSI market. DFT turns out to be a very useful resource for the VLSI industry by minimizing the risks of faults and failures. Chipedge being best VLSI training institute in India offers DFT Course Online. Make sure to check their VLSI training calendar to know about the course details.