ARTEST: AN ARCHITECTURAL LEVEL TEST GENERATOR FOR DATA PATH FAULTS AND CONTROL FAULTS

Abstract

In this paper, an ATF’G methodology working at an architectural level is proposed. For the data path portion, the hierarchy of the design is exploited and the dependence on the gate level information is relieved. For the conb’oi faults, gate level algorithms are incorporated with high level approaches to excite the fault and differentiate the fault effect to primary outputs. Due to the fault collapsing effect arid the fault differentiation process, several data types have been defined for the manipulation alf all possible fault e€fects. A functional equivalent model is used for sequential modules, which makes this technique extendable beyond the register-transfer level. The backtracking mechanism used in the control unit has been carefully modified to ensure a complete finite space searching. Some experimerrtal results are presented to show the effectiveness of this approach.