A digital block contains 10,000 flip-flops converted into 10 parallel scan chains of equal length. The Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) tool generates 500 test patterns. If the scan shift clock runs at 50 MHz, what is the exact time required to completely load and capture all test patterns (ignoring test setup overhead)?
With 10,000 FFs and 10 chains, the length of the longest chain is 1000 FFs. Loading one pattern takes 1000 shift cycles. One additional cycle is required for the capture operation. Thus, processing one pattern takes 1001 cycles. For 500 patterns, the total clock cycles = 500 x 1001 = 500,500 cycles. At 50 MHz, the clock period is 20 ns. Total Time = 500,500 x 20 ns = 0.01001$ seconds, or exactly 10.01 ms.
