Patent ID: 7376915

Claim:
A computer program embodied in a computer-readable medium for forming a scan chain segment of flip-flops in an integrated circuit design, the computer program when executed on a computer implementing operations comprising: generating a list of selected flip-flops in an integrated circuit design; selecting a destination flip-flop from the list of flip-flops; determining if an input of the destination flip-flop is directly connected to an output of a source flip-flop; and when the input of the destination flip-flop is directly connected to the output of the source flip-flop: determining if either of the source or destination flip-flops is part of an existing scan chain segment; if neither of the source or destination flip-flop is part of an existing scan chain segment, forming a scan chain segment with the source and destination flip-flops; if the destination flip-flop is the first flip-flop of an existing scan chain segment and the source flip-flop not part of an existing segment, combining the source flip-flop and the existing flip-flop segment to form a scan chain segment; if the destination flip-flop is the first flip-flop of an existing scan chain segment and the source flip-flop is the last flip-flop in another existing scan chain segment, combining the existing scan chain segment and the another scan chain segment to form a scan chain segment; and if the destination flip-flop is not part of an existing scan and the source flip-flop is the last flip-flop of an existing scan chain segment, combining the existing scan chain segment and the destination flip-flop to form a scan chain segment.