Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
Estimating diagnostic coverage in IC design based on static COI analysis of gate-level netlist and RTL fault simulation

Abstract:

Embodiments disclosed herein describe systems, methods, and products for safety verification of an IC design. A computer executing an illustrative EDA tool may perform a static cone of influence (COI) analysis of a gate-level netlist of the IC design to determine whether faults injected at combinational logic at different COIs are safe or dangerous. The computer may leverage this determination to perform a register-transfer level (RTL) simulation by generating and injecting equivalent faults to sequential logic in the IC design. The computer may further flexibly allow RTL simulations under different assumptions based upon downstream observability of the faults injected to the sequential logic. Because, RTL simulations are significantly faster than the gate-level simulations, the computer may efficiently calculate DC of one or more safety mechanism in the IC design.