Performance trade-offs in a parallel test generation/fault simulation environment

Heuristics are proposed to partition faults for parallel test generation with minimization of both the overall run time and test length as an objective. For efficient utilization of available processors, the work load has to be balanced at all times. Since it is very difficult to predict how difficult it will be to generate a test for a particular fault, the authors propose a load balancing method which uses static partitioning initially and then uses dynamic allocation of work for processors which become idle. A theoretical model is presented to predict the performance of the parallel test generation/fault simulation process. Experimental results based on an implementation of the Intel IPSC/2 hypercube multiprocessor using the ISCAS combinational benchmark circuits are presented