Using BDDs and ZBDDs for efficient identification of testable path delay faults

Abstract

We present a novel framework to identify all the robustly testable and untestable path delay faults in a circuit. The method uses a combination of decision diagrams for manipulating path delay faults and Boolean functions. The approach benefits from processing partial paths or fanout free segments in the circuit rather than the entire path. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is demonstrated experimentally. It is observed that the methodology identifies 350% more testable faults in the ISCAS'85 benchmark C6288 than any existing technique by utilizing only a fraction of the time compared to earlier work.