ATPRG: An automatic test program generator using HDL-A for fault diagnosisof analog/mixed-signal integrated circuits

HDL-A is an analog version of the Hardware Description Language which is su itable for structural and behavioral descriptions and simulations of digita l, analog, and mixed-signal circuits and systems. This paper presents an au tomatic test program generator (ATPRG) for fault diagnosis of analog/mixed- signal integrated circuits. The ATPRG is developed under the Mentor Graphic s design system environment, where the units under test (UUT's) are modeled in HDL-A and simulated by Accusim, and AMPLE (Advanced Multi-Purpose Langu age) in Mentor Graphics Design system environment is used to define and exe cute the generation process automatically. To increase the reliability and quality, the generated test programs mill be verified and validated, A veri fication process checks if the test programs are generated correctly and if the generated test programs can effectively locate fault(s), The test prog rams are validated by emulating the UUT's. The actual test can be run in a fully automatic mode, or interactively.