The impact of EFSM composition on functional ATPG

Abstract

The effectiveness and the efficiency of functional ATPGs based on deterministic strategies is influenced by the computational model adopted to represent the design under test. In this context the extended finite state machine (EFSM) is a valuable model which reduces the risk of state explosion preserving relevant features of more traditional FSMs. This paper. defines a particular variant of EFSMs to manage properly both synchronous and asynchronous modules in a uniform way, and then it proposes theoretical basis to perform their composition by bounding state and transition growth. The aim of composition is to improve functional ATPG whose effectiveness and efficiency may be limited when separate EFSMs are used to model the design under test. Experimental results confirm this conjecture.