Abstract: Test volume is an important factor affecting the cost of the SOC Testing. In order to reduce the cost of SOC
Testing, the paper proposes a method for compression/decompression of test data, that is the Min_Comp. Based on the analysis
of the different sizes of the run-length coding, the method determines the grouping of test data and it can improve the
compression ratio and reduce the test cost. Furthermore, by introducing the prefix and tail flag, the decoder leads to lower
hardware overhead compared with those in the references. Experiments were performed on the ISCAS 89 bechmark circuits, and
the results show that the Min_Comp code has a better compression ratio than the Golomb code. Also, the decompression circuit
has a low area overhead and is easy to design.

Key words: test vector compression, Huffman code, Golomb code, Min_Comp code