A test pattern generation approach for digital circuit is presented. The approach employs genetic algorithm to generate tests for faults. The gate level description of circuit under test (CUT) is translated into a nonlinear netwrok that can be computed easily
and an improved genetic algorithm is used to find out optimal solutions of energy function of the constrained network
so the test set of CUT is obtained. The approach has many merits
such as it can generate tests for all detectable faults including multi faults
possess the characteristics of parallel processing and can be implemented on multiprocessors.