Fast fault simulation in combinational circuits: an efficient data structure, dynamic dominators and refined check-up

Abstract

Several methods accelerating fault simulation for combinational circuits using parallel pattern evaluation are presented. All methods make use of a very efficient data structure which allows the easy recognition of special situations that can be used to avoid a lot of gate evaluations during explicit fault simulation. An implementation of the concepts shows that the resulting fault simulation algorithm is very fast. The proposals and the improved data structure considerably enhance the performance of the standard algorithm.<>