Synthesis for testability of large complexity controllers

Specification of large complexity controllers in industrial design environments is performed by means of a top-down methodology leading to a description based on a hierarchy of FSMs. This paper presents a set of algorithms which compare such hierarchical descriptions with their structural implementations to produce irredundant circuits for which test patterns are easily derived. These algorithms can be inserted into any commercial design flow, based on VHDL descriptions, thus creating a synthesis for testability environment which provides testable and optimized gate-level descriptions.