Abstract
The correlation between the physical paths of a digital circuit has important implications in various design automation problems, such as timing analysis, test generation and diagnosis. When considering the complexity and tight timing constraints of modern circuits, this correlation affects both the design process and the testing approaches followed in manufacturing. In this work we quantify the diversity of a set of paths (or path segments), let these be critical I/O paths, error propagation paths for various fault models, or paths traced for diagnostic purposes. Circuit paths are encoded using Zero-Suppressed Binary Decision Diagrams (ZBDDs); the proposed method consists of a sequence of standard ZBDD operations to provide a measure of the overlap of the paths under consideration. The main contribution of the presented method is that, path or path segment enumeration is entirely avoided and, hence, a large number of paths can be considered in practical time. Experimentation using standard benchmark circuits demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach in showing the difference in path correlation between various critical I/O path sets.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings - 16th IEEE European Test Symposium, ETS 2011 |
Pages | 141-146 |
Number of pages | 6 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2011 |
Event | 16th IEEE European Test Symposium, ETS 2011 - Trondheim, Norway Duration: 23 May 2011 → 27 May 2011 |
Other
Other | 16th IEEE European Test Symposium, ETS 2011 |
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Country/Territory | Norway |
City | Trondheim |
Period | 23/05/11 → 27/05/11 |
Keywords
- Digital circuits
- Path similarity
- Zero-supressed binary decision diagrams