Fast differential fault simulation by dynamic fault ordering

A technique that makes it possible to significantly improve the effectiveness of the differential algorithm for the fault simulation of synchronous sequential circuits is presented. The approach is based on dynamically reordering the fault list before the simulation of each input pattern: faults not yet detected are grouped according to a strategy aiming at minimizing the status differences between successive faults. In such a way the activity to be processed while computing each faulty circuit is minimized at a quite low computational cost. Experimental results are provided showing the effectiveness of the proposed method