Atrenta adds design-for-test analysis to SpyGlass tool

Atrenta adds design-for-test analysis to SpyGlass tool
By Michael Santarini, EE Times
January 8, 2002 (2:21 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020108S0055

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Atrenta Inc. has introduced added a design-for-test analysis capability to its SpyGlass predictive analysis tool.

The DFT add-on gives SpyGlass a cycle-accurate simulation engine and a testability analysis engine, said Ghulam Nurie, senior vice president of marketing and business development at Atrenta. That capability lets users enter constraints to find — early in the design cycle, during RTL development — problems that could occur in the manufacturing test phase.

The DFT add-on, Nurie said, ensures that designers will write their RTL code to comply with testability rules early on, before they run synthesis and simulation cycles. Finding these problems at the beginning of the design process can save several iterations and cut weeks off design cycles, he said.

"Trying to predict testability problems early in the design cycle is a difficult problem because testability is really a structural problem, not a functional problem," said Nurie. "Typically, you can't tell if you have a structural problem with RTL until you synthesize it. Our unique technique allows SpyGlass to do it."

Nurie said that after the tool runs through synthesis as usual, it then does cycle-accurate simulation on the gate-level netlist in test and scan mode. The testability analysis then checks the design against user constraints. Errors are highlighted and called out in the user's RTL code.

"We added a simulation engine because some test issues require dynamic analysis," said Nurie. "The testability engine does a true controllability and observability analysis of every signal in the design."

Nurie said his company has worked with Logic Vision, and correlated its offering with that company's test tools. Atrenta plans to work with other test vendors to add SpyGlass DFT rules to their test tools, he said.

SpyGlass 3.0 starts at $60,000 per year for an entry package. The tool runs on Sun/Solaris 2.5-2.8, HP-UX 10.2 and Red Ha t Linux 6.2 and above operating systems. The SpyGlass DFT option is priced at $25,000 per year.