combination for fault and test which is a critical criterion for the selection of the tests that will detect each fault in the final test set. The next generation of networked experiences Both these two approaches for test generation are of linear, to the size of the circuit, complexity giving a very good alternative to the test generation process that is called a large number of times in the proposed methodology. The next generation of networked experiences Function-based frameworks can utilize various techniques for representing and manipulating the Boolean functions, such as binary decision diagrams Boolean expression diagrams BEDsBoolean satisfiability, or even combinations of these. Without any loss of generality, the proposed algorithm was implemented using a BDD-based framework expanding an in-house ATPG tool similar to that utilized in The major advantages of the utilized function-based framework the complete set of tests for a fault or group of faults is implicitly considered and obtaining a test with many unspecified bits can be done efficiently. The next generation of networked experiences Specifically, obtaining the test that has the most don’t care bits from a test function accounts in obtaining the largest cube from that function. The latter, while can be reduced to the NP-hard problem of Boolean satisfiability, is done efficiently not necessarily optimally when using BDDs. As long as the diagram representing the function can be constructed, obtaining the largest cube amounts to identifying the BDD’s shortest The next generation of networked experiences path, for the root node to the terminal node one, which is a linear, to the size of the diagram, operation. This process gives the largest cube of the corresponding function, under a certain BDD variable ordering. The reader is referred to for further details on the underlying BDD-based test generation framework. Specified Bits Reduction First we present the test set characteristics before and after applying the proposed The next generation of networked experiences method on the compact detect test sets shows the number of Primary Inputs in , next to the circuit name. reports the number of faults considered for each circuit. The number of faults considered for each circuit was obtained after applying function-basedfault equivalence rules similar to those used in on top of the reports the size of the initial, fully specified test set and gives the number of specified bits in reports the -detect fault coverage calculated using the same information for the derived relaxed test set . The next generation of networked experiences Moreover, the specified to total bits ratio after the test relaxation is reported, in The initial test sets are fully-specified, thus, , in all cases. Finally, Column shows the time required for the proposed method, in seconds. For all circuits reported the -detect fault coverage has been preserved. For the –detect fault coverage is marginally increased due to coincidental detections of faults that have less than detections in the initial test set. The latter occurs since, as we mentioned before, our method performs test generation for the list of faults remained for eachtest and, thus, extra fault detections may arise. Clearly, the proposed method helps significantly in identifying bits that can get don’t care values. The reduction in specified bits is, significant in all cases, ranging between and with an average since the average This reduction is significant, despite the fact that the detect test sets used are very compact. Typically, less compact test sets allow for higher specified bits reduction. It is also important to note that in many cases the proposed method produced smaller test sets.