A parallel implementation of fault simulation on a cluster of workstations

A cluster of workstations may be employed for reducing fault simulation time greatly. Fault simulation can be parallelized by partitioning fault list, the test vector or both. In this study, parallel fault simulation algorithm called PAUSIM has been developed by parallelizing AUSUM which consists of logic simulation and two steps of fault simulation for sequential logic circuits. Compared to other algorithms, PAUSIM-CY avoids redundant work by a judicious task decomposition. Also, it adopts a cyclic fault partitioning method based on the LOG partitioning and local redistribution, resulting in a well-balanced load distribution. The results from the parallel implementation using MPI show a significant speed-up by PAUSIM-CY over other existing parallel algorithms.