DFT, DFY, and DFR; which one(s) do you worry about?

Abstract

Lately our vernacular has included a growing number of DFx terms. DFT (Design for Test), DFY (Design for Yield), and DFR (Design for Reliability) have become fairly common and useful terms along with a few other DFx terms such as DFM (Design for Manufacturability) and DFP (Design for Profit). The last term has a bit of a capitalistic slant. One could say that we have gone too far with all these terms. This short paper includes a discussion of circuit level DFT followed by an explanation of why DFT is more important to me as an ASIC test developer.