Tengteng Zhang, Yukun (Dexter) Gao and Dr. Duncan M. (Hank) Walker received the inaugural Best Poster Paper Award from the 45th IEEE International Test Conference (ITC) held in Seattle, Washington, on Oct. 21-23. The poster was entitled "Pattern Generation for Understanding Timing Sensitivity to Power Supply Noise."
ITC is the flagship conference of electronic systems testing, which includes the cycle of design verification, testing, diagnosis, failure analysis and improvement. Through participation in the conference, academia, design tool and equipment suppliers, designers, and test engineers are able to better understand and perhaps solve some of the challenges faced by industry.
In "Pattern Generation for Understanding Timing Sensitivity to Power Supply Noise," the authors considered the problem of automatic test pattern generation for understanding circuit timing sensitivity to power supply noise (PSN) during post-silicon validation. The software generates tests with increasing amounts of switching activity near the longest paths in the circuit. The increasing activity causes increasing power supply voltage droop, which increases circuit delay. Product engineers can apply these tests to prototype chips to help identify the speed-limiting parts of the circuit that need to be redesigned.
Walker is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist. Walker is active in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and was associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Circuits and Systems in 2011. He served as Ford Motor Company Design Professor II and computer science and engineering department head from 2011-2013.
The Dwight Look College of Engineering has honored Walker with the Charles W. Crawford Service Award, the E.D. Brockett Professorship and the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company Excellence in Engineering Teaching Award. He was named a Dwight Look College of Engineering Fellow, an AMD Fellow and a TEES Fellow.
Zhang is a doctoral candidate in computer engineering, a research assistant, and an IEEE student member. Before continuing his academic career at Texas A&M, he worked as a research assistant in the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Zhang received his bachelor's degree in information technology in 2010 from Southeast University in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China.
Gao is studying for his master's degree in computer engineering at Texas A&M and plans to graduate next year. He is a student research assistant focusing on automatic test pattern generation and design-for-testability with Walker and Zhang. Before joining Texas A&M, he worked as an intern DFT engineer at AMD, Shanghai, China. Gao received his bachelor's degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Shandong University in Jinan, China.
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Photos: (l-r) Gao, Walker, Zhang