Using an FPGA based computer as a hardware emulator for built-in self-test structures

Circuit emulation, using dynamically reconfigurable hardware is a high speed alternative to circuit simulation, especially for large and complex designs. Dynamic reconfiguration enhances the ability to efficiently analyse the test of combinational and sequential circuits by providing statistical information on fault grading, detectability, and signature analysis. We present a hardware emulation environment based on dynamically reconfigurable field programmable devices. For this work our main interests are in hardware acceleration of fault simulation in a built-in self-test environment and rapid prototyping of new BIST techniques