On the Use of Functional Test Generation in Diagnostic Test Generation for Synchronous Sequential Circuits

We study the relationship between diagnostic test generation for a gate-level fault model, which is used for generating diagnostic test sets for manufacturing defects, and functional test generation for a high-level fault model. In general, a functional fault may partially represent some of the effects of one gate-level fault but not another. Generating a test sequence for the functional fault is then likely to detect one gatelevel fault but not the other, thus distinguishing the two faults. This relationship points to the ability to use a functional test generation procedure (that targets functional fault detection) as a way of generating diagnostic test sequences for gate-level faults. We use this observation in two ways. The more direct way is to define functional faults that correspond to the differences between pairs of gate-level faults. The second way is to use functional test sequences as diagnostic test sequences without explicitly considering gate-level faults. We support the use of the resulting procedures with experimental results.