Test Set Reordering Using the Gate Exhaustive Test Metric

When a test set size is larger than desired, some patterns must be dropped. This paper presents a systematic method to reduce test set size; the method reorders a test set using the gate exhaustive test metric and truncates the test set to the desired size. To determine the effectiveness of the method, test sets with 1,556 test patterns were applied to 140 defective Stanford ELF18 test cores. The original test set required 758 test patterns to detect all defective cores, while the test set reordered using the presented method required 286 test patterns. The method also reduces the test application time for defective cores.