Fault simulation for multiple faults using shared BDD representation of fault sets

The authors propose a novel fault simulation technique for multiple faults. In order to handle a large number of multiple faults, sets of multiple faults are represented by Boolean functions, in which shared binary decision diagrams (BDDs) are used as an internal representation of Boolean functions. The authors also propose a fault dropping method, prime fault dropping, which is used efficiently to execute multiple fault simulation. The authors have succeeded in simulating 39 million double faults of a circuit of 2300 gates with about 20 Mbyte storage.<<ETX>>