Patents by Inventor Bruce McWilliam

Bruce McWilliam has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 6883113
    Abstract: A procedure for temporally isolating an environmentally dependent integrated circuit fault includes the steps of determining a marginally failing and a minimally passing environmental condition corresponding to the fault; identifying a clock cycle Tmax at which the fault was first detected; determining a candidate clock cycle at which the fault may have occurred; and iteratively a) applying test pattern subsets from an initial clock cycle through the candidate clock cycle under the marginally failing environmental condition; b) applying remaining test patterns under the minimally passing environmental condition; and c) adjusting the candidate clock cycle based upon whether the fault occurred during test pattern subset application up through the candidate clock cycle under the marginally failing environmental condition. Candidate clock cycle adjustment in accordance with a binary search technique enables determination of an exact clock cycle at which the fault occurred in a maximum of Log2 (Tmax+1) iterations.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 2002
    Date of Patent: April 19, 2005
    Assignee: Bae Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration, Inc.
    Inventors: Bruce McWilliam, Ronald Todd, Thomas M. Storey
  • Publication number: 20030200484
    Abstract: A procedure for temporally isolating an environmentally dependent integrated circuit fault includes the steps of determining a marginally failing and a minimally passing environmental condition corresponding to the fault; identifying a clock cycle Tmax at which the fault was first detected; determining a candidate clock cycle at which the fault may have occurred; and iteratively a) applying test pattern subsets from an initial clock cycle through the candidate clock cycle under the marginally failing environmental condition; b) applying remaining test patterns under the minimally passing environmental condition; and c) adjusting the candidate clock cycle based upon whether the fault occurred during test pattern subset application up through the candidate clock cycle under the marginally failing environmental condition.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 18, 2002
    Publication date: October 23, 2003
    Applicant: BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration, Inc.
    Inventors: Bruce McWilliam, Ronald Todd, Thomas M. Storey