An Evolutionary Methodology to Enhance Processor Software-Based Diagnosis

The widespread use of cheap processor cores requires the ability to quickly point out the manufacturing process criticalities in an effort to enhance the production yield. Fault diagnosis is an integral part of the industrial effort towards these goals. This paper describes an innovative application of evolutionary algorithms: iterative refinement of a diagnostic test set. Several enhancements in the used evolutionary core are additionally outlined, highlighting their relevance for the specific problem. Experimental results are reported in the paper showing the effectiveness of the approach for a widely-known microcontroller core.