The C2000 MCU device family has hardware logic to provide a very high diagnostic coverage on the CPUs at a transistor level during start-up and application time. This logic utilizes Design for Test (DfT) structures inserted into the device for rapid execution of high quality manufacturing tests, but with an internal test engine rather than external automated test equipment (ATE). This technique has proven to be effective in providing high coverage in less time.

The HWBIST tests must be triggered by the software. User may select to run all tests, or only a subset of the tests based on the execution time allocated to the HWBIST diagnostic. This time sliced test feature enables the HWBIST to be used effectively as a runtime diagnostic with execution of test in parallel with the application. Execution of HWBIST results in a much higher level of transistor switching per clock cycle than during normal software execution due to the high efficiency of the test. For more information, see C2000™ hardware built-in self-test. HWBIST execution failure will trigger NMI to the same CPU and other CPUs (if available based on the device configuration). After HWBIST execution, reset is issued to the CPU and the CPU context is restored.