"Victim gate" crosstalk fault model

Crosstalk faults may produce either glitches or additional delays. The impact of glitches on the behavior of synchronous digital ICs has been shown to be less relevant than that of the additional delays. Glitches may be filtered out by the inertial effects of gates. The driving capabilities of gates performing such a filtering, however, are impaired. Therefore, a transition propagating through one of them may be delayed because of a glitch on another input of the gate. This crosstalk induced effect (here referred to as "victim gate" crosstalk fault) is analyzed from a quantitative point of view. In particular, it is shown that it should be explicitly considered in path delay test generation in the presence of crosstalk faults. Simulations show that test sequences neglecting victim gate crosstalk faults present a relevant escape probability.