GOLDENGATE: A Fast and Accurate Bridging Fault Simulator Under A Hybrid Logic/IDDQ Testing Environment

In this paper we describe GOLDENGATE - a bridging fault simulator for cell-based digital VLSI circuits with the following features: 1. It targets both combinational and sequential circuits. 2. It simulates general (routing, adjacency, and intra-cell) realistic bridging faults efficiently through a table-based scheme. The pre-computed table contains accurate cell output voltage and I DDQ values obtained through electrical-level simulations. 3. It simulates both feedback and nonfeedback bridging faults (BFs) efficiently through a cycling event-driven technique. 4. It allows mixed voltage and I DDQ simulation to support a fully hybrid test scheme where mixed logic and I DDQ sensings are allowed. The experimental results show that GOLDENGATE is both accurate and fast. 1 Introduction Due to the high integration density of VLSI circuits, bridging faults (a physical defect that form a faulty resistive short between two conducting nets in the layout) , have become one of the most frequently ..