Concurrent execution of diagnostic fault simulation and equivalence identification during diagnostic test generation

Effective generation of diagnostic vectors can be assisted by a fast diagnostic fault simulator and an equivalence identification tool. Diagnostic fault simulation can be an expensive process for large circuits. If a large number of fault pairs are passed to an equivalence identification tool, it would take a long time. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed to concurrently execute diagnostic fault simulation and equivalence identification during diagnostic test generation, thereby reducing the overall execution time. Experimental results on industrial circuits and benchmark circuits demonstrate the potential of the proposed method.