Specification and design of a new memory fault simulator

Abstract

This paper presents a new fault simulator architecture for RAM memories. The key features of the proposed tool are: (1) user-definable fault models, test algorithm, and memory architecture; (2) very fast simulation algorithm; (3) ability to compute the coverage of any provided test sequence with respect to a user-defined set of fault models, and to eliminate redundant operations; (4) assessment of the power consumption generated by the test application. Moreover, the tool is able to modify the test algorithm in order to guarantee the compliance to user-defined power consumption constraints.