Title :
Why is ATPG easy?
Author :
Prasad, Mukul R. ; Chong, Philip ; Keutzer, Kurt
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA
Abstract :
Empirical observation shows that practically encountered instances of ATPG are efficiently solvable. However, it has been known for more than two decades that ATPG is an NP-complete problem. This work is one of the first attempts to reconcile these seemingly disparate results. We introduce the concept of circuit cut-width and characterize the complexity of ATPG in terms of this property. We provide theoretical and empirical results to argue that an interestingly large class of practical circuits have cut-width characteristics which ensure a provably efficient solution of ATPG on them
Keywords :
VLSI; automatic test pattern generation; binary decision diagrams; circuit CAD; integrated circuit design; logic CAD; ATPG; CAD; SAT classes; VLSI; average time analysis; efficient solution; empirical results; notation; theoretical results;
Conference_Titel :
Design Automation Conference, 1999. Proceedings. 36th
Conference_Location :
New Orleans, LA
Print_ISBN :
1-58113-092-9
DOI :
10.1109/DAC.1999.781224
