Accelerated fault simulation by propagating disjoint fault-sets

The authors propose a novel fault simulation method (the compressive method), which extends the idea of fault propagation on which the deductive and concurrent method are based. A fault set is used as a unit of fault propagation; it is a set of faults which cause the same effect on the primary outputs for a given input pattern. Thus, faults in the set are propagated in a lump, just like an individual fault in the concurrent method, and fault propagation is accelerated in proportion to number of elements in a fault set. The compressive method introduces union operation on the fault sets. The operation dynamically gathers faults into a fault set so that they are propagated in a bit unit. Fault simulation using this method provides better performance than the concurrent method; simulation time is shortened by 50-83% and memory storage is reduced by 50-80% in simulating a combinational circuit.<>