Patent ID: 7096384

Claim:
A fault simulator comprising: a fault position selection section that receives simulation result information obtained by a static timing simulation about delay time and timing of signal transmission in a semiconductor integrated circuit, and selects circuit components subjected to the simulation from the simulation result information as fault generation points; a delay fault generator for generating delay faults corresponding to the fault generation points using the information about the delay time and timing of the signal transmission in the simulation result information; and a fault simulating section that carries out, by using a test pattern to be verified, a logic simulation of a normal circuit of the semiconductor integrated circuit and a logic simulation of a faulty circuit in which the delay faults are inserted into the fault generation points, and verifies detectability of the delay faults by the test pattern from compared results of both the logic simulations, wherein said fault position selection section selects, as the fault generation points, the circuit components with temporal margin less than a predetermined threshold value, the temporal margin being associated with timing conditions concerning the signal transmission, which are set in advance in the semiconductor integrated circuit.