An improved method for identifying linear dependencies in path delay faults

The use of linear dependency relationships among path delay faults (PDFs) is an effective way to determine circuit timing characteristics. The proposed approach improves the performance of performing a linear dependency check by accelerating the Gauss elimination process. This paper presents new algorithms to represent a PDF with respect to a testable set as well as a methodology to calculate the delays of all critical sensitizable PDFs while testing only a small subset of testable PDFs. In contrast to a previous implicit method, the proposed method guarantees that each sensitizable fault can be represented as a linear combination of tested faults but its time performance can be significantly improved when combined with such implicit methods