An Approach to the Testing of Microprocessors

Abstract

In this paper, we describe functional testing techniques for detecting single stuck-at faults in a microprocessor. These techniques appear to be practical in that a relatively small number of machine language instructions is needed in the programs which implement them, the number of reference outputs which must be stored is small, and hardware redundancy for testing purposes is not needed. The efficacy of use of these functional testing techniques has been demonstrated by applying them to the testing of a simulated 4-bit microprocessor with simulated single stuck-at faults.