Automatic manufacturing test case generation method and system

1. A testing system comprising:

a tester for receiving test vectors;

a device under test coupled to the tester;

a source for generating at least one design verification test case; and

an automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism coupled to the source for receiving a plurality of design verification test cases (DVTCs) from the source and based thereon automatically generating a manufacturing test case (MTC) that includes at least a first design verification test case and a second design verification test case.

2. The testing system of claim 1 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

a screening facility for screening a group of design verification test cases (DVTCs) and determining at least one DVTC that is suitable for inclusion into a manufacturing test case based on a user input.

3. The testing system of claim 1 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

a facility for automatically generating initialization code and observability promotion code for each selected DVTC.

4. The testing system of claim 1 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

a facility for generating a composite DVTC by combining two or more DVTCs.

5. The testing system of claim 4 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

a facility for automatically generating reset code and cache observability promotion code for the composite DVTC.

6. The testing system of claim 1 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

a fault grading facility for grading MTCs to determine the effectiveness of a particular MTC in identifying faults and providing fault coverage.

7. The testing system of claim 6 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

a coverage analyzer for receiving at least two graded MTCs and generating a suite of MTCs that includes a minimum set of MTCs that provides a predetermined level of test coverage.

8. The testing system of claim 1 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

an interrupt code generator for generating code, that when executed, selectively interrupts a processing flow of a DVTC to promote observability of data that would otherwise be lost due to overwriting of the data by the continued execution of the DVTC.

9. The testing system of claim 1 wherein the automatic manufacturing test case generation mechanism includes

an interrupt code generator for generating code, that when executed, interrupts a processing flow of a DVTC to promote observability of cache data.

10. A method for generating a suite of manufacturing text cases, said method comprising:

receiving a plurality of design verification test cases (DVTCs) from one or more sources;

screening the received DVTCs to generate a subset of DVTCs based on user input;

selecting a first DVTC from the subset of DVTCs;

automatically generating a first modified DVTC based on the first DVTC;

combining a predetermined number of modified DVTCs to generate a composite DVTC; and

automatically generating initialization code for the composite DVTC.

11. The method of claim 10

wherein the initialization code is optimized to reduce the number of cycles required by a tester to execute the initialization code;

wherein the method further includes the step of

generating observability promotion code; wherein the observability promotion code is optimized to reduce the number of cycles required by a tester to execute the observability promotion code.

12. The method of claim 10 further comprising the steps of:

automatically generating initialization code for the first DVTC; and

automatically generating observability promotion code for the first DVTC.

13. The method of claim 10

wherein the user input specifies at least one of an event of interest or figure of merit.

14. The method of claim 10 further comprising the steps of:

generating reset code;

generating cache observability promotion code; and

combining the reset code and the cache observability promotion code with the composite DVTC to generate a single manufacturing test case (MTC).

15. The method of claim 10 further comprising the step of:

subjecting the manufacturing test case (MTC) to a fault grading process.

16. The method of claim 15 wherein the step of subjecting the manufacturing test case (MTC) to a fault grading process includes

determining the amount of fault coverage provided by the manufacturing test case (MTC).

17. The method of claim 10 further comprising the steps of:

performing coverage analysis based on at least two graded MTCs; and

generating a suite of MTCe that includes a minimum set of MTCs that provides a predetermined level of test coverage.

18. The method of claim 10 further comprising the step of

generating code, that when executed, selectively interrupts a processing flow of a DVTC to promote observability of data that would otherwise be lost due to overwriting of the data by the continued execution of the DVTC.

19. The method of claim 10 further comprising the step of

generating code, that when executed, interrupts a processing flow of a DVTC to promote observability of cache data.

20. The method of claim 10 further comprising the step of

automatically generating cache observability promotion code for the composite DVTC.