Alternating Strategies for Sequential Circuit ATPG
Michael S. Hsiao, Elizabeth M. Rudnick, Janak H. Patel · 1996
A new sequential circuit test generator, ALTTEST, is described which alternates repeatedly between two phases of test generation. The first phase uses a simulation-based genetic algorithm, while the second phase uses a deterministic algorithm. The fast execution of the first phase combines with the more powerful test sequence generation and redundancy-identification capabilities of the second phase to produce test sets having high fault coverages in low execution times. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated on the ISCAS89 sequential benchmark circuits and several synthesized circuits. I Introduction Much research has been done in the area of automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) for sequential circuits [1-21]. Both deterministic and simulation-based algorithms have been used. In a typical deterministic test generator, each target fault is first excited, the fault effects are propagated to a primary output (PO), and the required state is then justified through reverse ti...