Design for diagnosable multiple-output digital systems

A design for diagnosable multiple-output digital systems is presented, in which not only error detection is implemented by the minimum number of checkers but also fault isolation is realized by minimal additional hardware instead of traditional software diagnostic procedures such that the computation time and memory space for fault isolation are eliminated. A partition algorithm is utilized for partitioning a digital system specially into subsystems with each subsystem containing only one primary output. With the aid of this partition algorithm, an algorithm for automatic fault isolation is presented. The algorithm is suitable for computer implementation so that faults in large size digital systems can be isolated automatically. The overhead of the additional hardware to isolate faults automatically is less than 2.1%.<>