Parallel-concurrent fault simulation

A fault simulation algorithm based on the partitioning of faults into groups, with the group size equal to the number of bits in the host computer word, is presented. The fault effects of a particular group are evaluated using parallel fault simulation techniques and propagated using concurrent fault simulation techniques. The speed of the algorithm depends on the circuit and on the fault-grouping criterion. Three static grouping criteria are examined and compared in terms of speed and memory requirements. A dynamic regrouping technique is developed and is shown to improve the performance of static grouping