Fsimac: a fault simulator for asynchronous sequential circuits

At very high frequencies, the major potential of asynchronous circuits is absence of clock skew and, through that, better exploitation of relative timing relations. This paper presents Fsimac, a gate-level fault simulator for stuck-at and gate-delay faults in asynchronous sequential circuits. Fsimac not only evaluates combinational logic and typical asynchronous gates such as Muller C-elements, but also complex domino gates, which are widely used in high-speed designs. Our algorithm for detecting feedback loops is designed so as to minimize the iterations for simulating the unfolded circuit. We use min-max timing analysis to compute the bounds on the signal delays. Stuck-at faults are detected by comparing logic values at the primary outputs against the corresponding values in the fault-free design. For delay faults, we additionally compare min-max time stamps for primary output signals. Fault coverage reported by Fsimac for pseudo-random tests generated by Cellular Automata show some...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ATS
• Authors: Susmita Sur-Kolay, Marly Roncken, Ken S. Stevens, Parimal Pal Chaudhuri, Rob Roy
• Keywords: Asynchronous Sequential Circuits, ATS 2000, Hardware, Primary Output, Typical Asynchronous Gates