SUMMARYGenerally, a programmable LSI such as an FPGA is difficult to test compared to an ASIC. There are two major reasons for this. The first is that an automatic test pattern generator (ATPG) cannot be used because of the programmability of the FPGA. The other reason is that the FPGA architecture is very complex. In this paper, we propose a new FPGA architecture that will simplify the testing of the device. The base of our architecture is general island-style FPGA architecture, but it consists of a few types of circuit blocks and orderly wire connections. This paper also presents efficient test configurations for our proposed architecture. We evaluated our architecture and test configurations using a prototype chip. As a result, the chip was fully tested using our configurations in a short test time. Moreover, our architecture can provide comparable performance to a conventional FPGA architecture. key words: design for testability, homogeneous architecture, test method, prototype chip

An advantage of a RLD (Reconfigurable logic device) such as an FPGA (Field programmable gate array) is that it can be customized after being manufactured. However, there is a problem related to standby power when using it in SoC used in embedded systems. Power gating, which is one of the power reduction techniques, is difficult to use in SRAM-based RLDs because of the high overhead -data hibernation and reconfiguration time -and SRAM being volatile.In this paper, we describe a chip that we developed -a reconfigurable logic chip based on FeRAM (Ferroelectric random access memory) technology. The chip employs island-style routing architecture and uses a variable grain logic cell as a logic block. A NV-FF (Non-Volatile FlipFlop), which contains FeRAM, a FF, and power-gating control circuits, is used as configuration memory. The NV-FF can transmit data between FeRAM and FF automatically when power to the chip is turned off/on. Thus, chip-level power gating is possible. The hibernate/restore time is less than 1 ms. The chip has 18 ¢ 18 logic blocks and an area of 54.76 mm ¾ .

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