Delay-fault diagnosis based on critical path tracing from symbolic simulation

Abstract

A reliable method for delay fault diagnosis, based on critical path tracing from symbolic simulation of the fault-free circuit, is presented. It does not require timing evaluations and may be very accurate. The diagnosis method consists of simulation of the fault-free circuit with a six-valued logic algebra and a tracing of critical paths from primary outputs to primary inputs. The proposed method is an alternative to fault simulation. It requires no delay size based fault models and considers only the fault-free circuit. Consequently, this approach is faster, reliable, and requires less memory than conventional fault simulation. To improve the diagnosis accuracy, the concept of sensitive lines has been developed. Based on the method presented, a fast algorithm has been implemented in C++ on a SUN-SPARC workstation. >