Functional Test Generation

Functional testing is a common methodology for a quick verification of the cor‑rect implementation of a design. Moreover, functional testing allows to higher the level of abstraction at which test pattern generators (TPGs) are applied, in order to overcome the increasing complexity of the gate-level test pattern gen­eration task. Functional TPGs extend gate-level TPG techniques to the RT and behavioral levels by defining error models applicable to hardware description lan­guages (HDLs). In this chapter potentialities of genetic algorithms are exploited to propose a hybrid TPG, which allows to generate functional test patterns for HDL design descriptions. Genetic algorithms are mixed with a deterministic methodology based on binary decison diagrams and the respective advantages and drawbacks are compared. This analysis allows to define a hybrid genetic approach for functional testing.