Patent ID: 7308631

Claim:
A testing circuit operable to test an integrated circuit having a first functional block of circuitry coupled to a second functional block of circuitry, said testing circuit comprising: at least one wrapper serial scan chain having a wrapper serial input and a wrapper serial output and being operable to apply a set of input signals to said first block of circuitry and to capture a set of output signals from said first block of circuitry; wherein said wrapper serial scan chain includes a wrapper serial scan chain segment operable to apply and to capture signals passed between said first functional block of circuitry and said second functional block of circuitry; and a segment selector operable to selectively connect said wrapper serial scan chain segment to said wrapper serial input and to said wrapper serial output whilst bypassing at least a portion of said wrapper serial scan chain outside of said wrapper serial scan chain segment such that a set of input signals can be applied to said second functional block of circuitry and a set of output signals captured from said second functional block of circuitry without requiring signal values to be scanned through all of said wrapper serial scan chain.