The present disclosure provides a semiconductor wafer. The semiconductor wafer includes: a scribe line between a first row of dies and a second row of dies, and a benchmark circuit disposed on the scribe line. The benchmark circuit includes a first switching circuit, a first process control monitoring (PCM) device and a second PCM device coupled to the first switching circuit, and a second switching circuit. The first switching circuit is configured to selectively couple the first PCM device and the second PCM device to receive a test signal, wherein the first PCM device and the second PCM device are configured to output a first output signal and a second output signal in response to the test signal, respectively. The second switching circuit is configured to selectively couple the first PCM device and the second PCM device to output the first output signal or the second output signal.

A signal-switching circuit for use in an electronic system is provided. The electronic system includes a plurality of hardware circuits. The signal-switching circuit includes a control circuit and a switch circuit. The control circuit is arranged to receive a trigger signal generated by a trigger circuit of the electronic system, and change a mode signal generated by the control circuit according to the trigger signal. The switch circuit is arranged to electrically connect transmission signals from one of the hardware circuits to a transmission interface of the electronic system according to the mode signal.

This disclosure describes a reduced pin bus that can be used on integrated circuits or embedded cores within integrated circuits. The bus may be used for serial access to circuits where the availability of pins on ICs or terminals on cores is limited. The bus may be used for a variety of serial communication operations such as, but not limited to, serial communication related test, emulation, debug, and/or trace operations of an IC or core design. Other aspects of the disclosure include the use of reduced pin buses for emulation, debug, and trace operations and for functional operations.

An integrated circuit includes a supply terminal to receive a supply voltage and a test terminal that operates in an input mode and an output mode. A test interface of the integrated circuit operates in a normal mode requiring a serial write to the test terminal to access test locations in the integrated circuit. The test interface also operates in an automatic mode in which addresses for test locations are auto incremented by toggling the supply voltage from a high voltage level to a low voltage level and back to the high voltage level. In an input mode, with the supply voltage at the low voltage level, the test pin receives configuration and address information. In output mode, with the supply voltage at the high voltage level, the test pin supplies test information corresponding to the address information received.

An address and command port interface selectively enables JTAG TAP domain operations and Trace domain operations within an IC. The port carries TMS and TDI input and TDO output on a single pin and receives a clock signal on a separate pin. The addressable two pin interface loads and updates instructions and data to the TAP domain within the IC. The instruction or data update operations in multiple ICs occur simultaneously. A process transmits data from an addressed target device to a controller using data frames, each data frame comprising a header bit and data bits. The logic level of the header bit is used to start, continue, and stop the data transmission to the controller. A data and clock signal interface between a controller and multiple target devices provides for each target device to be individually addressed and commanded to perform a JTAG or Trace operation.

In an embodiment a processing system includes a test circuit configured to set an address value, an upper address limit and a lower address limit to a given reference bit sequence, verify whether the upper-limit comparison signal has a respective third logic level and/or whether the lower-limit comparison signal has the respective third logic level, assert an error signal in response to determining that the upper-limit comparison signal does not have the respective third logic level or the lower-limit comparison signal does not have the respective third logic level, repeat a certain operation for each of the N bits.

Methods, systems, and apparatus for testing semiconductor devices.

A semiconductor device may be provided. The semiconductor device may include a latch comparison circuit configured for generating a latched address by latching a pattern signal inputted through an address, and generate a comparison signal by comparing a pattern signal inputted through the address and the latched address. The semiconductor device may include a failure flag generation circuit configured for generating a failure flag signal based on the comparison signal.

To improve test efficiency of addressable test chips, an addressable test chip test system includes a test equipment, a probe card and an addressable test chip, the test equipment connects to the addressable test chip through the probe card to constitute a test path, the test system includes a new type of address register, which can provide two test modes for users according to user's needs. A new type of high density addressable test chip can accommodate DUTs of more than 1000/mm.sup.2.

In certain aspects, a pattern generation system includes a memory and a processor coupled to the memory. The memory is configured to store a lookup table set. The lookup table set includes a mapping relationship between source patterns and a set of test channels, and is indexed based on a pin function index. The processor is configured to generate the source patterns, execute a pin-mapping operation based on an instruction to obtain a set of source selection signals for the set of test channels based on the pin function index and the lookup table set, and select and output a source signal from the source patterns for each test channel based on a corresponding source selection signal for the respective test channel.