On the use of term trees for effective and efficient test pattern generation

The aim of the structural automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) is to efficiently construct a compact set of test patterns that are able do discover faults from a given structural fault model. The paper focuses on the usage for ATPG of a new data representation, called term trees. We designed and implemented a new term tree based ATPG algorithm with the following features: (1) 100% coverage of all nonredundant faults of the fault model; (2) a (near) minimal test set; (3) detection of circuit redundancy that disables testing for some faults; (4) a practical ATPG time and memory usage. We introduce the term trees and their structural fault model, show how to use them for effective and efficient test pattern generation and discuss some ATPG results. We also propose an effective, efficient and flexible term tree minimization algorithm and discuss some benchmark results. The term trees can be applied for many other purposes in logic design and other areas.