A comparison of classical scheduling approaches in power-constrained block-test scheduling

Classical scheduling approaches are applied here to overcome the problem of unequal-length block-test scheduling under power dissipation constraints. List schedulinglike approaches are proposed j r s t as greedy algorithms to tackle the fore mentioned problem. Then, distributiongraph based approaches are described in order to achieve balanced test concurrency and test power dissipation. An extended tree growing technique is also used in combination with these classical approaches in order to improve the test concurrency having assignedpower dissipation limits. A comparison between the results of the test scheduling experiments highlights the advantages and disadvantages of applying different classical scheduling algorithms to the power-constrained test scheduling problem. [email protected] partitioned testing with run to completion defined in [2]. An efficient scheme for overlaying the block-tests, called extended tree growing technique is employed to model the fore mentioned problem. Thus, traditional high-level synthesis approaches (e.g. left-edge algorithm, list scheduling and distribution-graph based scheduling) can be employed together with this model to search for power-constrained block-test schedule profiles in a polynomial time. The algorithm fully exploits test parallelism under power dissipation constraints. This is achieved by overlaying the block-test intervals of compatible subcircuits to test as many of them as possible concurrently so that the maximum accumulated power dissipation does not go over the given limit. A constant additive model is employed for the power dissipation estimation throughout the algorithms.