Semiconductor device and method for testing the same

Abstract

A method for testing a semiconductor device having plural transmitting (TX) circuits and plural receiving (RX) circuits at a low cost and in a short time. The semiconductor device includes two or more pairs of transmitting and receiving circuits. Each of the transmitting circuits converts parallel data to serial data and transmits the converted serial data to external while each of the receiving circuits receives serial data from external and converts the received serial data to parallel data. Furthermore, the semiconductor device includes a device that enables two or more selected pairs of transmitting and receiving circuits to be connected serially and alternately. The semiconductor device can be configured so that the serially connected transmitting or receiving circuit in the first stage inputs a test signal to be compared with a signal output from the serially connected receiving or transmitting circuit in the last stage.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.