Averna Provides Design for Testability Support for Hardware Validation and Manufacturing

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Averna, a provider of test, quality, and automated solutions for industries including aerospace, automotive, consumer electronics, industrial manufacturing, life sciences, and telecommunications, provides Design for Testability (DFT) methodologies that support hardware validation, manufacturing test, fault detection, and system diagnostics across semiconductor, FPGA, and PCB-level designs.

The company’s DFT integrates test structures early in the product design phase to improve fault detection and analysis while reducing overall test effort and cost. Averna notes that observability and controllability are key principles of DFT, allowing engineers to access, measure, and drive internal signals and states during testing.

According to the company, DFT supports hardware validation and manufacturing by improving debugging, fault isolation, and yield validation throughout the product lifecycle. Averna states that integrating testability early helps reduce debugging cycles, simplify diagnostics, and avoid redesign challenges caused by delayed test integration.

Averna provides DFT support for both prototype validation and high-volume manufacturing environments. The company's design-phase testing focuses on functionality, performance, and system behavior validation, while production-phase testing prioritizes speed, repeatability, and manufacturing efficiency through automated testing strategies.

The company’s DFT structures support automated test equipment and manufacturing test optimization by enabling higher fault coverage and repeatable production testing. Averna also provides system-level testing approaches intended to validate device behavior under operating conditions.

For semiconductor and integrated circuit applications, Averna provides DFT techniques including scan architectures, Built-In Self-Test (BIST), and boundary scan interfaces to support internal node access, fault detection, and manufacturing defect analysis in ASIC and system-on-chip devices.

The company also provides DFT approaches for FPGA development using embedded debug instrumentation, reconfigurable test architectures, embedded logic analyzers, and JTAG-based interfaces for internal signal observation and validation.

Averna outlines several DFT techniques and applications, including:

• Scan-based testing for controllability and observability of internal circuit states
• Built-In Self-Test (BIST) for embedded autonomous testing
• Boundary scan and JTAG for board-level interconnect testing without physical probing
• Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) for manufacturing test vector generation
• Test points and debug interfaces for signal visibility and hardware debugging
• Functional and structural testing for operational validation and physical defect detection

The company states that DFT methodologies support detection of stuck-at faults, transition faults, path delay faults, bridging faults, and open faults.

Averna also outlines DFT practices including defining test objectives early, balancing observability and controllability with timing requirements, using standards such as IEEE 1149.x and IEEE 1687, partitioning systems into independently testable blocks, and aligning test strategies with automated test equipment and production throughput requirements. DFT supports higher fault coverage, improved fault isolation, automated production testing, board-level and system-level testing, reuse of test infrastructure across validation and production, and hardware debugging support.

The company also notes that DFT implementation may increase design complexity, silicon area, power consumption, test pattern volume, and timing constraints, while requiring test strategies to be defined before fabrication.

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