Patent attributes
Methods of reducing the amount of logic in a digital circuit without affecting the functionality of the circuit. A circuit description and one or more test patterns are supplied to a fault simulator. The fault simulator runs the test patterns on the circuit, and identifies any nodes that did not transition in either direction (“non-transitioning nodes”). If the test patterns provide full coverage of the desired functionality for the circuit, each of the non-transitioning nodes is unnecessary to the logical functionality of the circuit in the target application. Therefore, the logic driving the non-transitioning nodes is removed from the circuit. The modified circuit can then be re-simulated, if desired, to verify that the relevant functionality of the circuit has not changed.
