On the relation between simulation-based and SAT-based diagnosis

The problem of diagnosis – or locating the source of an error or fault – occurs in several areas of Computer Aided Design, such as dynamic verification, property checking, equivalence checking and production test. Manually locating errors can be a time consuming and resource-intensive process. Several automated approaches for diagnosis have been presented, among them simulation-based and SAT-based techniques. These two approaches are found to be robust even for large circuits as well as being applicable to a broad range of diagnosis problems. An in-depth comparison of both approaches necessary to augment our knowledge of diagnosis procedures has not been addressed by previous work. This paper provides a thorough analysis of the similarities and differences between simulation-based and SAT-based procedures for diagnosis. The relation between the basic approaches is theoretically analyzed. Issues regarding performance and diagnosis quality (resolution) are discussed. Experimental ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: DATE
• Authors: Görschwin Fey, Sean Safarpour, Andreas G. Veneris, Rolf Drechsler
• Keywords: Computer Aided Design, DATE 2006, Diagnosis Procedures, Hardware, Several Automated Approaches