Maximal Independent Fault Set for Gate-Exhaustive Faults

Dynamic test compaction procedures use independent fault sets to guide the generation of compact test sets. In addition, a maximal independent fault set provides a lower bound on the number of tests, and can thus be used for evaluating the level of test compaction. This article notes that defect-aware, cell-aware, and gate-exhaustive faults have certain properties that can be used in the computation of independent fault sets. This article focuses on gate-exhaustive faults and the computation of a maximal independent fault set. The experimental results for benchmark circuits support the discussion.