Patent ID: 8839181

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of organizing scan chains in an integrated circuit, the method comprising: generating, for each of a plurality of scan chains including at least a first scan chain and a second scan chain, first preference information representing a first criterion comprising a sum of a first distance and a second distance of a scanning element, the first distance representing a distance from the scanning element to a starting point of a scan chain and the second distance representing a distance from the scanning element to an ending point of the scan chain, wherein the first preference information is generated by ordering the sum of the first distance and the second distance for each scanning element in the scan chain; generating, for each of the plurality of scan elements, second preference information representing a second criterion comprising a sum of the first distance, the second distance and a third distance, the third distance representing a distance between the starting point of a scan chain and the end point of the scan chain, wherein the second preference information is generated by ordering the sum of the first distance, the second distance and the third distance for each of the plurality of scan chains; and at a computing device, assigning each of the plurality of scanning elements to an optimized one of the plurality of scan chains based on the first preference information and the second preference information, wherein at least one scanning element is provisionally assigned to the first scan chain based on the second preference information and selectively assigned to the second scan chain based on the first preference information.