Simultaneous signal selection for silicon debug through Mixed-Integer Linear Programming

Post-silicon validation is the most vital parts of modern Integrated Circuits. The key challenge of silicon validation is that it has limited observability and controllability of internal signals. To improve those, a profitable set of signals should be selected. An automated procedure is proposed to select those signals which are used to facilitate early malfunctions of the design. Given the input vector set to the design an error transmission matrix is generated. From that, both relatively independent and dependent flip-flops are identified for grouping the signals through Mixed-Integer Linear programming. This method precisely identifies the paths which improves observability and can speed up the process.