Fourth Asian Test Symposium (ATS'95)
An improved hierarchical test generation technique for combinational circuits with repetitive sub-circuits
Bangalore, India
November 23-November 24
ISBN: 0-8186-7129-7
D.R. Chakrabarti, Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., Indian Inst. of Technol., Kanpur, India
A. Jain, Dept. of Comput. Sci. & Eng., Indian Inst. of Technol., Kanpur, India
An improved hierarchical testing algorithm for combinational circuits with repetitive sub-circuits using the bus fault model has been proposed. This model exploits the regularity of a circuit by grouping together identical gate-level sub-circuits into high-level sub-circuits. Though the existing test generation techniques using this model reduces the required time substantially in many cases, it fails on encountering incompatibility between the inputs and outputs of high-level modules. The algorithm proposed helps in resolving high level incompatibility. The concept of a state transition graph has been used and it has been shown that resolving incompatibility at the high level is equivalent to finding a loop in the state transition graph. The technique is hierarchical in the sense that the original modeled high-level circuit is sub-divided into a number of components as soon as an incompatibility is encountered. The results of implementation of the algorithm for a class of combinational circuits indicate a significant reduction in the test generation time and complete fault coverage thus validating our technique.
Index Terms:
combinational circuits; fault diagnosis; logic testing; high level synthesis; design for testability; logic CAD; automatic test software; computational complexity; signal flow graphs; hierarchical test generation technique; combinational circuits; repetitive subcircuits; hierarchical testing algorithm; bus fault model; high-level subcircuits; high level incompatibility; state transition graph; test generation time; complete fault coverage; design for testability; ATPG
Citation:
D.R. Chakrabarti, A. Jain, "An improved hierarchical test generation technique for combinational circuits with repetitive sub-circuits," ats, pp.237, Fourth Asian Test Symposium (ATS'95), 1995