FALCON: Rapid statistical fault coverage estimation for complex designs

Abstract

FALCON (FAst fauLt COverage estimatioN) is a scalable method for fault grading which uses local fault simulations to estimate the fault coverage of a large system. The generality of this method makes it applicable for any modular design. Our analysis shows that the run time of our algorithm is related to the number of gates and the number of IOs in a module, while fault simulation run time is related to the total number of gates in the system. We have measured fault coverage for OR1200 and IVM processors and compared the results with fault simulation performed by a commercial tool. We have also compared our results with fault sampling. Our results show that for large designs FALCON is an order of magnitude faster compared with fault simulation. It also has a smaller error rate compared with fault sampling when the size of design under test grows.