Compact Test Generation for Non-Robustly Testable PDFs

We introduce a new Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG) methodology for compact generation of test sets, to detect non-robustly testable path delay faults in combinational and fully enhanced scanned circuits. The proposed framework is non-enumerative with respect to the faults examined, and relies on the appropriate formulation and generation of functions that are used to derive the desired test set. Each generated function targets many faults and, implicitly, maintains a very large set of tests for the targeted faults. Such function-based approaches allow for further compaction using either static or dynamic test set compaction methods. One such dynamic test set compaction heuristic is also presented here. We evaluate the performance of the proposed methodology in terms of test efficiency. The reported results on a variety of benchmarks indicate that the method is very promising.