Orderly Random Testing for Both Hardware and Software

Based on random testing, this paper introduces a new concept of orderly random testing for both hardware and software systems. Random testing, having been employed for years, seems to be inefficient for its random selection of test patterns. Therefore, a new concept of pre-determined distance among test vectors is proposed in the paper to make it more effective in testing. The idea is based on the fact that the larger the distance between two adjacent test vectors in a test sequence, the more the faults will be detected by the test vectors. Procedure of constructing such a testing sequence is presented in detail. The new approach has shown its remarkable advantage of fitting in with both hardware and software testing. Experimental results and mathematical analysis are also given to evaluate the performances of the novel method.