Abstract
For different delay models, the concept of sensitization can be very different. Traditional concepts of sensitization cannot precisely describe circuit behavior when the input vectors change very fast. Using Boolean process approach, this paper presents a new definition of sensitization for arbitrary input waveforms. By this new concept it is found that if the inputs of a combinational circuit can change at any time, and each gate's delay varies within an interval (bounded gate delay model), then every path, which is not necessarily a single topological path, is sensitizable. From the experimental results it can be seen that, all nonsensitizable paths for traditional concepts actually can propagate transitions along them for some input waveforms. However, specified time between input transitions (STBIT) and minimum permissible pulse width (ε) are two major factors to make some paths non-sensitizable.
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Zhao Zhuxing received his B.S. degree from Department of Computer Science and Technology Tsinghua University in 1991, and his M.S. degree from Beijing Institute of Control Engineerning in 1994. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His major research interests include CAD in VLSI design and test, and fault-tolerant computing.
Min Yinghua is a Professor of computer science at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the Chair of technical committee on fault-tolerant computing, Chinese Computer Federation, and a member of editorial boards of four academic journals, and program committees of numerous international conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE, and has published more than 100 technical papers. His research interests include electronic testing, reliable and high-performance computing.
Li Zhongcheng received his B.S. from Dept. of Computer Science and Technology of Peking University, and M.S. and Dr. Eng. in Computer Science from Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1986 and 1991 respectively, where he works now as a Professor. His research interests include fault-tolerant computing, VLSI design and test, and software reliability
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Zhao, Z., Min, Y. & Li, Z. Path sensitization. J. of Comput. Sci. & Technol. 12, 271–282 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02948977
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02948977