Analyzing the Need for ATPG Targeting GOS Defects

In this work the need for specific ATPG targeting Gate Oxide Short (GOS) defects is highlighted. Many works have been done to develop ATPG for resistive shorts considering both external bridges between gates, and intra-gate shorts. We show with some examples that in some cases the detection of all detectable intra-gate bridging faults does not imply covering all detectable GOS defects in the circuit. A commercially available standard gate library is analyzed to demonstrate that this problem may appear in real applications. An ATPG tool oriented to detect GOS defects with $I_{DDQ}$ testing is presented. ATPG experiments on a set of benchmark circuits show the efficiency of the proposed tool.