Low-cost redundancy identification for combinational circuits

Abstract

This paper presents a novel fault independent algorithm for redundancy identification (FIRE) in combinational circuits. The algorithm is based on a simple concept that a fault which requires an illegal combination of values as a necessary condition for its detection is undetectable and hence redundant. It uses implications to find a subset of such faults whose detection requires conflicts on certain lines in the circuit. Our results on benchmark circuits indicate that we find a large number of redundancies, much faster when compared to a test-generation-based approach for redundancy identification.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>