An On-Chip multichannel waveform monitor for diagnosis of systems-on-a-chip integration

An on-chip multichannel waveform monitoring technique enhances built-in test and diagnostic capabilities of systems-on-a-chip (SoC) integration. The proposed multichannel monitor includes multiple probing front-end modules and. a single shared waveform acquisition kernel that consists of an incremental variable step dellay generator and an incremental reference voltage generator, featuring adaptive sample time generation for the operation of a target circuit and unidirectional waveform acquisition flow for area-efficient control. A 16-channel prototype in 0.18-mu m CMOS technology demonstrated on-chip waveform acquisition at 40-ps and 200-mu V resolution. Combined on- and off-chip streamed-bit processing achieves background. continuous waveform acquisition at 260 ms per single timing point for repetitive signals, while eliminating the integration of on-die high-capacity memory. A 700 mu m x 600 mu m area was occupied by a waveform acquisition kernel and an additional 60 mu m x 100 mu m area for each front-end module. The developed on-chip multichannel waveform monitoring technique is waveform accurate, area efficient, and suitable for diagnosis toward power supply and signal integrity in analog and digital circuits in mixed-signal SoC integration.