An design architecture for an application specific integrated circuit
(ASIC) is disclosed. The design architecture of the ASIC includes a
pre-determined number of redundant computational units such that when
defective computational units are found during testing, full
functionality of the ASIC is maintained by re-mapping functionality from
the defective units to the once redundant units. The marking of defective
units and the re-mapping of functionality are automated by using
self-test logic built into each computational unit in the ASIC. The
self-test logic is adapted to allow the corresponding computational unit
to self-isolate itself from the data initialization process and to
self-disable to avoid any computation when the ASIC is in operation mode.
The re-mapping of functionality is achieved by initializing the
computational units in the array in a serial manner.