Semiconductor circuit and method for testing, monitoring and application-near setting of a semiconductor circuit

Abstract

A semiconductor circuit can have a standard interface for external data, address and / or command interchange in normal operation and a further test interface provided for a test operation with a semiconductor component and with a BIST unit (built-in self-test) assigned to the semiconductor component. The semiconductor circuit can also have a BIST controller for initialization, testing and application-near setting of the semiconductor component, a read-only nonvolatile memory, a programmable nonvolatile memory, and a volatile memory. The processed data stored as operating, test and / or boot parameters in the programmable nonvolatile memory are used during booting and in normal operation for test and configuration purposes for application-near setting of the semiconductor circuit.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to a semiconductor circuit having a semiconductor component and having a BIST cell assigned to the semiconductor component, and to a method for testing, monitoring and proximate setting of a semiconductor circuit. Background technique [0002] Integrated semiconductor circuits with semiconductor components, such as DRAMs (Dynamic Random Access Memory), are generally subjected to extensive functional tests during the production process, in particular, these functional tests are used to identify defective memory cell, or defective row line (column line) or column line (row line), or generally speaking, a defective circuit portion of the semiconductor device, and in order to ensure a fault-free operation of the memory module, the etc. semiconductor devices are tested under different operating conditions, for example, predetermined data values ​​are written into memory cells of an array of memory cells, and are subsequently read again...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0011] However, a disadvantage of the aforementioned testing concept is that, in particular, the BIST cell is only used during the test of production, while the operating parameters collected during the operation of the semiconductor circuit are only used when a memory module with a defective semiconductor circuit is tested. When it is returned to the manufacturer, it will be analyzed by the manufacturer. Therefore, for example, the characteristic data that may be programmed in the chip IC, test data, or setting parameters can not only be used for past production post-event tracking, which can be used for user-specific settings during operation

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