SAM: A comprehensive mechanism for accessing embedded sensors in modern SoCs

Abstract

With technology scaling, the number of sensors integrated into modern system-on-chip (SoC) designs has increased greatly over the past several years. These sensors must be accessed for a number of reasons (test, configuration, calibration, etc.). This paper proposes a novel sensor access mechanism (SAM) to address sensor access in various modes, including manufacturing test mode, functional mode, built-in self-test (BIST) mode, silicon validation mode, and calibration mode. Moreover, SAM standardizes the testing and measurement of embedded sensors by providing easy and effective access to sensors distributed across the SoC. Further, SAM does not introduce a new pin, making it JTAG compatible and practice-oriented for easy industrial adoption. Various simulation results, collected by integrating SAM into several benchmarks demonstrate its high performance and low overhead.