scholarly journals Debugging sequential circuits using Boolean satisfiability

Author(s):  
Moayad Fahim Ali ◽  
A. Veneris ◽  
S. Safarpour ◽  
M. Abadir ◽  
R. Drechsler ◽  
...  
2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (08) ◽  
pp. 1605-1618 ◽  
Author(s):  
ASSIM SAGAHYROON ◽  
FADI A. ALOUL ◽  
ALEXANDER SUDNITSON

Power consumption of synchronous sequential circuits can be reduced by careful encoding of the states of the circuit. The idea is to reduce the average number of bit changes per state transition by finding an optimal state assignment. This state assignment problem is NP-hard, and existing techniques rely mainly on heuristic-based methods. The primary goal of this work is to assess the suitability of using complete advanced Boolean Satisfiability and Integer Linear Programming (ILP) methods in finding an optimized solution. We formulate the problem as a 0-1 ILP instance with power minimization being the objective. Using generic and commercial solvers, the proposed approach was tested on sample circuits from the MCNC benchmark suite. Furthermore, in an effort to accelerate the search process, circuits were checked for symmetries and symmetry breaking predicates were added whenever applicable. The experimental results provide a pragmatic insight into the problem and basis for further exploration.


Author(s):  
Ahmed K. Jameil ◽  
Yasir Amer Abbas ◽  
Saad Al-Azawi

Background: The designed circuits are tested for faults detection in fabrication to determine which devices are defective. The design verification is performed to ensure that the circuit performs the required functions after manufacturing. Design verification is regarded as a test form in both sequential and combinational circuits. The analysis of sequential circuits test is more difficult than in the combinational circuit test. However, algorithms can be used to test any type of sequential circuit regardless of its composition. An important sequential circuit is the finite impulse response (FIR) filters that are widely used in digital signal processing applications. Objective: This paper presented a new design under test (DUT) algorithm for 4-and 8-tap FIR filters. Also, the FIR filter and the proposed DUT algorithm is implemented using field programmable gate arrays (FPGA). Method: The proposed test generation algorithm is implemented in VHDL using Xilinx ISE V14.5 design suite and verified by simulation. The test generation algorithm used FIR filtering redundant faults to obtain a set of target faults for DUT. The fault simulation is used in DUT to assess the benefit of test pattern in fault coverage. Results: The proposed technique provides average reductions of 20 % and 38.8 % in time delay with 57.39 % and 75 % reductions in power consumption and 28.89 % and 28.89 % slices reductions for 4- and 8-tap FIR filter, respectively compared to similar techniques. Conclusions: The results of implementation proved that a high speed and low power consumption design can be achieved. Further, the speed of the proposed architecture is faster than that of existing techniques.


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